Standard Literature Series 



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Hubert Burns 



CAR LY L E 



?arriuel Johnson 

MACAULAY 



Company 




Pass _-?R.4 33 1 
Book 



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-CopyrightN . 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSrr. 



■■'■ "-■• 




THOMAS CARLYLE. 



STANDARD LITERATURE SERIES 



ROBERT BURNS 

BY 
THOMAS CARLYLE 



SAMUEL JOHNSON 

BY 

LORD MACAULAY 



EDITED WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY 

EDWARD EVERETT HALE, Jr., Ph.D. 

PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH, UNION COLLEGE 



NEWSON & COMPANY 

NEW YORK 






LIBRARY Of CONGRESS 
Two Copies Received 

dec 23 isoa 

Vt>opyri*nt Entry 
CLASS fi XXc No, 



fcuros 



Copyright, 1908, by 
NEWSON & COMPANY 



10S9 



a- 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

PREFATORY NOTE 1 

INTRODUCTION 3 

Thomas Carlyle 

Life 5 

Carlyle as a Critic 9 

Carlyle 's Style . . . . 11 

Thomas Babington Macaulay 

Life 13 

Macaulay as a Critic 17 

Macaulay's Style 19 

ROBERT BURNS 23 

By Carlyle 

SAMUEL JOHNSON 95 

By Macaulay 



PREFATORY NOTE 

The Essays of Carlyle and Macaulay specified in the 
College Entrance Requirements for study and practice for 
the years 1908 to 1912 inclusive, are brought together in 
the following pages with such helps to the student as will 
enable him to make the most advantageous use of the time 
devoted to the study. Both essayists need a certain amount 
of study, — Macaulay chiefly in the way of looking up allu- 
sions, Carlyle in the way of making clear the development of 
the idea. It is thought by some teachers that a student 
should do this kind of work without much information in 
notes and so forth, and certainly a little such study will do 
more in familiarizing one with literary and historical ma- 
terial than a good deal of reading in editions where every- 
thing is explained in notes and comments. 

On the other hand the constant turning to reference books 
to determine everything that seems to need explanation 
is generally distracting and often hard work. It is very 
likely to give the idea that the study, of literature means the 
acquiring of much miscellaneous, if often useful, information 
about people and things, and the result of such an idea is 
generally bad for one's literary appreciation and taste. 
Again, the sources of the knowledge desired are not always 
immediately available for the reader's reference. The effort 
of annotation, therefore, should be to avoid the difficulties 
of these two courses, and to give whatever information about 
people and things will enable the student to read intelli- 
gently and without distraction of mind, while the teacher 
is free to direct the line of study in such a way as to bring 



2 PREFATORY NOTE 

out the chief literary elements. On this latter point some 
help will reasonably be expected in the introduction, where 
the important facts of the personal history and the general 
characteristics of the author as manifested in his life and 
work should be found. Neither introduction nor notes, how- 
ever, can dispense with individual work on the part of the 
student, nor with understanding and appreciation on the 
part of the teacher. Especially should the student not feel 
content until the spirit as well as the substance of the 
author's work is fully comprehended. 

EDWARD E. HALE, Jr. 

UNION COLLEGE. 



INTRODUCTION 

Carlyle and Macaulay are often thought of comparatively. They 
were very eminent men of letters at about the same time and in 
somewhat the same field or fields of literature. Both wrote for the 
Edinburgh Review : Carlyle also wrote for other reviews, so that he 
and Macaulay sometimes wrote about the same book. 1 

Each wrote, as a rule, on somewhat the same sort of subject, bio- 
graphy or history, rather than absolute artistic or literary criticism. 
Each wrote larger histories which became well known. Carlyle had 
rather the broader reputation, for besides thinking of him as a 
historian, people thought of him as one who considered earnestly and 
wrote on problems of the day and of life in general. Yet, in spite 
of this difference, a large part of their work runs along much the 
same lines, so that they come often together into the minds of stu- 
dents, and are, either by implication or actually, brought into 
comparison. 

Macaulay has long been one of the best of English writers to give 
one an introduction to literature. Not that he is the keenest critic, 
the broadest or deepest scholar. The best critics and scholars are often 
of slight use to those who have not the training needful to appreciate 
them. Macaulay can be read by anyone who will read a book. And 
he was himself so absorbed and interested in literature that one is 
carried along with him. It is true that to be fully appreciated 
Macaulay requires some knowledge, perhaps one should say a good 
deal. But he does not require much knowledge to be enjoyed. Many 
of us read Macaulay's Essays as children, and learned from them as 
we went along. His pages are full of references and allusions that 
are rather trying to anyone who thinks he has to look them all up. 
Many of them, however, really explain themselves, and Macaulay has 
himself such an evident interest in literature, he so clearly considers 
it one of the great interests of the world, that one unconsciously falls 
into his way of thinking. He himself began to read when very young 
and took to literature, not as something to be learned or studied, but 
as one of the normal facts of life; and having great powers of reading 
and memory, he easily made himself acquainted with the chief mas* 

1 Each wrote an article in J. W. Croker's edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson; the 
two articles may be profitably compared. They are edited in one volume by Pro- 
fessor William Strunk. 



4 INTRODUCTION. 

terpieces of the greatest writers. There never was a time, we might 
say, when he did not take literature as a matter of course, and when 
we read his essays we get something of the same view. 

It is true that Macaulay has been sometimes regarded as a writer 
t)f no great depth of thought, and in this respect Carlyle is often pre- 
ferred. Probably the essays in the present volume will be thought to 
bear out such an idea. Macaulay gives us a most interesting account 
of a great man of letters; he shows us the dark side and the light, the 
brilliancy and the gloom. He makes Johnson a real figure for us. 
Carlyle — dealing with another great man of letters, of very different 
stamp it is true — does something very different. He gives us very 
little of an account of the life of Burns, but he arouses at once a num- 
ber of questions as to the real mission of the poet, the grounds for 
his appreciation, his relation to his age, his inner and his outer life. 
These questions interest us, more perhaps than does the life, or we 
ought to say, the actual facts of life, however brilliantly put. We 
feel that we are going a bit deeper. We are perhaps doing a bit of 
thinking ourselves, for these are not matters that everybody is familiar 
with which Carlyle is putting together for us. He is trying to get at 
the essential facts in the life of Burns, and an effort to get at essentials 
is stimulating. To see what a man really was and what his time was, 
that leads us perhaps to the idea that we may well consider what 
we really are and our time, too; to look beneath the reputations and 
conventionalities of the day, and see if we can get at the essentials 
of it and order our lives in harmony with it. That was what Carlyle 
did, and that, in the main, is what people generally think of him as 
doing. He used sometimes to be spoken of as a thinker, and this 
was not so much on account of his remarkable intellectual powers, 
used in solving deep questions of metaphysics (as in the case of Kant 
for instance), but rather from his insistence on an original attitude, 
an attitude of reason and right, in the disturbances and difficulties of 
life. He wanted a solution not necessarily in accordance with custom, 
nor with effect, but in accordance with right reason. 

Macaulay introduces us to the intellectual life by the way of 
literature, an immensely interesting and fascinating way. Carlyle 
introduces us to the intellectual life by the way of thought, and 
that is immensely fascinating, too. Not that these are two different 
things, however: literature is thought, and thought easily becomes 
literature. But we may look at the matter in two different ways, 
or go two rather different ways to get to the same place. 



INTRODUCTION. 5 

Thomas Carlyle. 
Life. 

Thomas Carlyle was born, and passed his early days, under con- 
ditions not very unlike those of Robert Burns, on a small farm named 
Ecclefachan in the southwest part of Scotland. His father, like the 
father of Burns, was a small farmer; as Carlyle writes of William 
Burns, "though but a hard-handed peasant, a complete and unfolded 
man." His mother also was a person of great sagacity and force of 
character. Thomas was the eldest son, and, as was often the case 
with such Scottish families, was destined for an education and for the 
pulpit. Here Carlyle's lot differed from that of Burns, and he thought 
of the difference himself. "Had this William Burns's small seven 
acres of nursery ground anywise prospered, the boy Robert had been 
sent to school, had struggled forward as so many weaker men do, to 
some university; come forth not as a rustic wonder, but as a regular, 
well-trained, intellectual workman, and changed the whole course of 
British Literature." Carlyle himself went to school in the town of 
Annan, near his home, and after that to the University of Edinburgh 
in 1810, where he remained several years, although he left without 
taking a degree. In view of his after life it is curious to note that his 
especial study was that of mathematics. But though this was his 
chief formal study, he read very widely in many other fields, and 
studied languages in a way that was extremely useful to him in his 
later life. After leaving the university he passed two years as tutor 
in the family of Mr. Charles Buller, still having the ministry in view. 
By the end of that time, however, he became entirely convinced that 
literature and not the pulpit, was his true work in life. His first 
publication was a translation of Legendre's Geometry, but he soon 
produced something more in common with the interests by which he 
is best known. This was a Life of Schiller, which he contributed to 
the London Magazine in 1823, and which he followed by a translation 
of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister. 

England at this time was just awakening to the fact that Ger- 
many was again the country for modern ideas. In the seventeenth 
century, Germany, enfeebled by the Thirty Years' War had hardly 
counted in the intellectual world. In the eighteenth century the 
intellectual world was largely under the brilliant domination of French 
influence. But with the beginning of the nineteenth century it began 
to be apparent that once more there were powers in literature and 



6 INTRODUCTION. 

philosophy in Germany. Not a few great men were inspired by Ger- 
man ideas. Thus Walter Scott's first publication was a translation 
from a ballad by Burger. Wordsworth and his sister spent a winter 
in Germany. DeQuincey was deep in German metaphysics. But 
most was it to Coleridge, in the beginning of the century, that Eng- 
land owed the introduction to German ideas. Carlyle is the great 
follower of Coleridge in this respect. Coleridge was most interested 
in philosophy; Carlyle read widely, but his chief interest was in that 
outburst of literature which is known as the romantic move- 
ment. He became familiar with Goethe, Schiller, Jean Paul Richter, 
Tieck, Hoffman, Novalis, and wrote of them later, as well as on 
German literature as a whole. And his influence was widely felt. He 
says of Burns that he might have changed the course of British 
literature. We can hardly say that Carlyle did this, but he was even 
in his early days a powerful, if not at that time an original influence. 
His interest in German literature and history lasted through life and 
his great work was the life of Frederick the Great. 

In 1826, Carlyle married Miss Jane Welch, a woman of intellectual 
character and powers, and shortly removed to a farm belonging to her 
called Craigenputtoch. It lay some dozen miles to the northwest of 
Dumfries, "among the granite hills," to quote a description of it by 
himself, "and black morasses which stretch westward through Gal- 
loway, almost to the Irish Sea. In this wilderness of heath and rock, 
our estate stands forth, a green oasis, a tract of ploughed, partly en- 
closed and planted ground, where corn ripens, and trees afford a shade, 
although surrounded by sea-mews and rough- woolled sheep." Here 
with books and periodicals Carlyle continued his literary work, writ- 
ing first chiefly for the reviews. He began to contribute to the 
Edinburgh Review, sending first an article on Jean Paul Richter, then 
one on German literature, then the essay on Burns printed in this 
book. He wrote much else for the Edinburgh, as well as for other 
reviews, and also for the Edinburgh Encyclopedia. 

Here also he wrote a book, though he could not publish it at once, 
of a very different character from these critical essays, namely Sartor 
Resartus. This essay on Burns, and the other literary essays — to be 
found in what are often called Carlyle 's Miscellanies — constitute a 
definite sum of work on literary subjects, some of it on German litera- 
ture, some on French, some on English. But Carlyle was not to be 
strictly speaking a literary critic, save in a very broad sense. He 
became known later as one who had ideas not on literature especially, 
but on life in general, and he became to many a guide in thinking 



INTRODUCTION. 7 

and living, a sort of practical philosopher. He was called by such 
names as seer, prophet, censor of the age; he was thought of as one who 
had help and inspiration for the various problems of life. Now Sartor 
Resartus is the first of Carlyle's books which turns particularly to this 
object. Carlyle's literary essays, this on Burns for instance, have 
much in them beyond mere literary criticism, much that gives us by 
the way the teaching that Carlyle afterwards applied to the different 
problems of life. But Sartor Resartus, though it takes the outward 
form of fiction, is really a sort of philosophy of life and is full of 
thoughts and ideas which, though at first they seemed strange and 
even violent, have by this time become a part of the mental make-up 
of almost everybody. The book pretended whimsically to be a 
Philosophy of Clothes: but by clothes Carlyle really meant all sorts 
of conventionalities, manners, shams, falsehoods, illusions and every- 
thing else that serves to conceal from us the true nature of things. 
To get down to reality in everything, that was the idea; we see it 
already in the essay on Burns. In all sorts of forms the idea appears 
in Carlyle's writing. Burns is sincere; the professor in Sartor Resartus 
studies all clothes, coverings, hulls, to get at the reality beneath. Fred- 
erick is " loyal to fact." The book was full of philosophy, poetry, mor- 
ality, humor, but it was extravagant in form and expression, and for a 
time no one would publish it. Nowadays, if we are astonished at any- 
thing in Sartor Resartus, it is that anyone should put such familiar 
ideas into such a whimsical form ; but the ideas are familiar to us only 
because Carlyle made them so, and the book when read at the end of 
his career is something very different from the book at the beginning. 

At about this time (1834) Carlyle moved to London, as a better 
field for literary work, and settled at Chelsea, where he lived for al- 
most fifty years. Here he worked hard upon his French Revolution, 
which was published in 1837, and at once made him a reputation 
which Sartor Resartus had only suggested. It is a historical work, 
but Carlyle, though he wrote several histories or biographies, was by 
no means an ordinary historian. This book is more a collection of 
historical pictures or episodes than a historical narrative. It rather 
assumes that the reader will have some idea of the general course of 
affairs. But it is a wonderfully vivid and vigorous presentation, and 
whatever it be as a history, it certainly gives a most striking and 
powerful impression. 

Carlyle was now a well-known figure in the world of letters, and 
now he began particularly to give attention and thought to problems 
of the time. In 1839 he published Chartism, in 1843 Past and Present, 



8 INTRODUCTION. 

in 1850 Latter Day Pamphlets, which expressed strongly and often 
violently his commentary upon affairs of the day. These works 
probably did little really to increase his fame, though they undoubtedly 
gave him a wide reputation. At the same time he published Heroes 
and Hero-worship, one of the several courses of lectures which he 
gave in the years 1837-1840, and the Letters and Speeches of Oliver 
Cromwell, 1845. These books are of the more lasting character: 
the first expresses Carlyle's idea as to Great Men; the latter gives a 
picture of a great man, one whom Carlyle felt strongly had never been 
truly appreciated since the day of his death. These books carry on 
the philosophy of the earlier writings: the hero is the one who sees his 
duty in the world and firmly and fearlessly carries it out in the face 
of every possible opposition. To know the truth and to carry out 
one's work, these were the two great principles on which was based 
Carlyle's philosophy of life as we may call it, although it was by no 
means a well-defined system, with interdependent principles and de- 
ductions. Carlyle had no such system, and indeed had a good deal 
of contempt for anything of the sort. He had certain ideas or prin- 
ciples firmly in mind — duty, work, truth — and in a hundred, indeed, 
a thousand ways, he impressed them upon his generation. He pre- 
ferred biography, because in the history of the world his admiration 
was aroused by the strong, often austere, often misunderstood, but 
wholly self-confident men like Dante, Cromwell, Johnson. Burns 
was not such a man, and we can read in the whole of this essay the 
feeling of regret that Burns with the wonderful powers of vision that 
he had, had not also the will and power to act, to do the particular 
thing he was put into the world to do. 

Looking down the history of the world, the attention of Carlyle 
was attracted by the figure of Frederick the Great, and (almost whim- 
sically it seems) selected him as the subject of his great work. For 
a number of years he toiled over the immense field of original authori- 
ties, and in 1858 began to publish the work which was not completed 
for seven years more. It is his most elaborate book and full of his 
particular power, but it offers little in the way of ideas that the reader 
of Sartor Resartus and Heroes and Hero-worship, of the French Revo- 
lution and the Cromwell had not already. After this Carlyle wrote 
but little, although we should mention the Life of Sterling, already 
written in 1851, and the Early Kings of Norway, 1875. At the con- 
clusion of his Friedrich, Carlyle was seventy years of age, universally 
recognized in England and in America as one of the leaders of litera- 
ture and of thought. He died in the year 1881, on February 5th. 



INTRODUCTION. 



Carlyle as a Critic. 



To put Carlyle and Macaulay side by side is practically to compare 
them, and to study their essays on different men of letters is prac- 
tically to think of them as critics. In this section we shall consider 
the particular kind of criticism in which Carlyle was eminent: later 
we will study the particular abilities of Macaulay. 

Carlyle is not, it should be said, chiefly to be remembered as a 
literary critic. He was a great force in the thought of the nineteenth 
century, not merely in literature, but in politics, in practical philoso- 
phy, in the guidance of life in general, as has been already said. He 
was an intellectual guide to many, or if not a guide, he was a stimulus, 
an awakener, an inspirer, and his means of awakening and inspiring 
was not always by essays or books on literature. He sometimes 
wrote on general questions of life, he sometimes wrote on biography, 
he sometimes wrote on history. In the earlier years of his literary 
career, however, he read much, and wrote, as has been seen, a good 
deal upon what he read, and especially on the literature of Germany, 
which he was the means of introducing to many. Some persons pre- 
fer these essays of Carlyle to his later work; they are spoken of as 
"models of insight into character, profound and discriminating esti- 
mates." Among these essays on the great figures of German litera- 
ture and of the eighteenth century in France are two on English 
authors, Samuel Johnson and Robert Burns. 

If, then, we ask ourselves what are the characteristics of Carlyle as 
a critic, — if we pass our judgment on the present essay, as we may 
rightly do, — we may say that Carlyle, like the more particularly 
literary critics, does give us an opinion, an estimate of the works of 
Burns. In pp. 33-61 we find what Carlyle has to say of Burns 's 
poems and songs. This is not a very large proportion of the essay, 
and of this passage we shall find that there is quite as much about 
Burns as about his poetry. So if we think of a critic as one who 
analyzes the works of genius or their effect on us, we shall judge 
Carlyle to be only in part such a critic ; or to put it in another way, to 
be such a critic and something more, too. 

He tells us of the sincerity of Burns, and therefore of his poetry, 
and of the way his poetry is interesting, though dealing with the very 
simplest of subjects. He finds in Burns's poetry in general " a rugged 
sterling worth" and a singularly effective pictorial power, and an 
earnestness of true passion, together with humor, pathos, and other 
poetic qualities. And on these subjects he evidently gives us his 



10 INTRODUCTION. 

own opinions; in some of them he will resemble others, in some of 
them he will differ. But here we have the critic, as many most com- 
monly think of him, exhibiting and explaining the works of genius as 
he sees and understands them with a keener vision than others or a 
truer power of appreciation. It is not exactly a judgment that we 
expect from such a critic, a telling what is good and what bad; it is 
rather more a guidance or inspiration that we find. Such a critic 
shows us the essential quality or power of the man he writes of, 
whether it be poet or novelist or essayist, or one not a man of letters 
at all; we expect such a critic to get at the essential quality of his 
work and show it to us and make us feel it. He does not necessarily 
compare him with others or give him a place in the literary hierarchy 
of the world in general, but he shows us what there is in his work that 
is fine and of lasting worth. 

Yet Carlyle was not entirely such a critic even. So much he did, 
and, in a broad way, with success; but he was really more intent on 
other things. "To leave the mere literary character of Burns," he 
says, " which has already detained us too long." There is something 
else, evidently, of more importance. " Far more interesting than his 
written works are his acted ones," he goes on. The man is more than 
his books; in fact, it is only as his books exhibit the man that they are 
of greatest interest to Carlyle. The man Burns was Carlyle's subject. 
"Through life he acted a tragedy," he wrote (p. 30), and the tragedy 
of life was far more interesting to Carlyle than any tragedy of litera- 
ture could be. And just as Macaulay was really more of an historian 
than a critic, so Carlyle was really more of a biographer. This essay 
is of more importance in showing us Burns as a man than as it tells 
about Burns's poems. So in the essay Carlyle wrote on Samuel John- 
son: he wanted to show us Johnson the Great Man; the literary value 
of his works was something secondary. Carlyle's great works are 
biographies: Heroes and Hero-worship, Oliver Cromwell, Frederick 
the Great. He was more than a biographer, too : he wrote a famous 
history; he wrote on the theory, as we may say, of life; he wrote on 
the practical affairs of life, too; but he was as characteristically a 
biographer as he was anything else, because he was so absorbed and 
interested in the life of man and the different questions that came up 
in his own day and had come up in the past. And, indeed, it is as 
such that thousands regard him as a master; as being one who knew 
the possibilities and conditions of life. 



INTRODUCTION. 11 



Carlyle's Style. 

The style of Carlyle is almost as notable in the history of nineteenth 
century literature as that of Macaulay. There is, however, one point 
which makes a study of it in this particular essay on Burns rather a 
different matter from a study of the style of Macaulay 's based on his 
essay on Johnson. That essay was one of Macaulay's last written 
pieces, and in the matter of style is regarded as one of the best 
things he ever wrote. This essay of Carlyle's, on the other hand, is 
one of his earlier works, and whether his best writing or not, it is 
certainly rather different in style from his more mature works, the 
style which we commonly think of when we speak of him. Many 
people think that these earlier essays are better in point of mere ex- 
pression than the later works which made him famous. Certainly, 
they lack some of the rather discordant elements that used to annoy 
people in his later work. But whether better or worse, the point just 
here is that the two are rather different; in Sartor Resartus, for in- 
stance, one will find not a few pecularities which are hardly to be per- 
ceived in this essay on Burns. 

Our view will be mainly of Carlyle's manner of writing as we see it 
in this essay, of that earlier manner that some think so much better 
than the later style with so many mannerisms. And first of the vo- 
cabulary : the choice of words is not especially marked, not especially 
Latin or Saxon one would say; not of long words particularly; 
and yet there is something original about the wording. What is it? 
Perhaps it cannot easily be included in one generalization; but look 
along in the essay and note any word that seems out of the common. 
Here are some from the first pages: " a brave mausoleum, " p. 23; " nay 
perhaps," p. 24; "the poor jostlings of existence," p. 24; "Christian 
bowels," p. 24; "companions of his 'pilgrimage" p. 24; "offends in 
the same kind," p. 25; " we are yet to learn," p. 26. Go on for a dozen 
or twenty pages and you will have a list of words and phrases that 
one does not commonly meet with. They are all correct, but they do 
not seem quite current; they are a little bookish, a little quaint, even 
archaic, perhaps. Such a vocabulary gives a character to one's writ- 
ing, gives a certain originality. Carlyle doubtless got them from his 
wide reading rather than from hearing them in the mouths of men. 
Wherever he got them they give a particular quality to his writing, 
a quality which might be disagreeable if carried too far, but which 
in this essay, at least, gives us rather a sense of original strength. 

In his later writings Carlyle often fell into an awkward sentence- 



12 INTRODUCTION. 

structure that seems at times as though he haa borrowed it from the 
German literature that he had read so much. We shall not note that 
particularly here. If we do notice anything in the matter of sentence- 
form, it will probably be a peculiar sort of sentence made of three 
clauses, connected by colons or semi-colons. You may find such 
sentences everywhere: " No poet of any age or nation is more graphic 
than Burns: the characteristic features disclose themselves to him at 
a glance; three lines from his hand and we have a likeness," p. 43. 
That is rather a good kind of sentence : the first part gives a generaliza- 
tion; the second explains it or gives particulars. Carlyle did not 
always follow such a definite order, but he was inclined to write rather 
long sentences and was very apt to indicate their coherence, or their 
compound character, by his use of the colon or semi-colon. This is a 
help to the reader, without a doubt, yet these longer sentences are 
not, in the long run, so clear as Macaulay's shorter ones. 

These things, however, are not the main matters; the thing that 
gives the style is quality. Can we find in the matter of expression the 
thing that gives the quality, or is it a matter of the thought? 

We believe that in the matter of technical style, Carlyle has not 
much to teach the student. But that is not saying that his writing 
has not great excellencies. In choice of words, in sentence-structure, 
even in the use of figures, we shall probably learn but little from him. 
But we shall not fail to admire the vigorous power of his expression. 
Not only nothing of weakness, but nothing of commonplaceness or 
conventionality. It is good, strong, original writing. We feel always 
that it is the man himself who writes. He is not writing as others 
have written whose books he has read; he is not writing as he hopes 
will most impress us. He is writing just as he thinks, with a heart 
full of feeling and a mind full of facts. He uses the form and expres- 
sion of a reviewer, it is true. He says "We are anxious not to ex- 
aggerate," "We question whether." But we see readily that that is 
only a form. We really have to do with a man, and a sound-thinking 
man at that. If there is a characteristic way of thinking, it may be 
in his constantly seeing, as we may say, the things he is writing of. 
Hence his frequent use of the present tense ; hence his use of the figure 
of vision; hence, a characteristic more noticeable in the later Carlyle 
than here, his use of exclamations, apostrophes, and questions. He 
seems to see Burns in the different phases of his tragic life; he writes 
as though he saw him, and though he may not give us the same sight, 
he does give us the feeling of strength and sincerity of a man writing 
of something real to him. 



INTRODUCTION. 13 

Thomas Babington Macaulay. 

Life. 

To Macaulay, literature with all its traditions and associations, 
was a matter of immense interest and delight. He read enormously 
all his life, preferring good books to poor ones, but being interested 
in anything that had any claim at all to be called literature, even 
in the widest sense. He not only read much, but he read carefully; 
his " library contained many books," his nephew writes 1 "of no great 
intrinsic value in themselves, which are readable from the first page 
to the last, for the sake of the notes inscribed in immense profusion 
down their margins." He is, as has been said, an excellent introduc- 
tor to literature because he has himself such an immense knowledge, 
love and enthusiasm for literature that he is likely not only to guide, 
but to attract. 

This feeling Macaulay showed in his early youth. 2 It is well known 
that he was a very precocious child : his memory went back to the age 
of two; he began to read at three; he rarely played with toys, but pre- 
ferred to read, to tell stories, or to repeat what he had been reading, 
often in the very language of the book. He not only read but wrote. 
When he was eight years of age he wrote a compendium of universal 
history, a paper on the Christian religion designed to convert the peo- 
ple of Travancore, half of a poem in six cantos, called The Battle of 
Cheviot, a heroic poem called Olaus the Great, besides a great many 
hymns. These facts are worth noting, not only because they chow 
2 most remarkable mind, but because they show a mind absorbed 
and delighted by literary things. 

We must not imagine that this great precocity in Macaulay made 
him in any way eccentric or out-of-the-way, a dreamer, or an affected 
recluse. In later years he was a thorough man of affairs, a public 
man, serving for a long time in Parliament, and for several years in 
the Supreme Council for India. He was a thoroughly practical man, 
but he had besides his practicability the passion for reading and 
writing, which is the mark of a man of letters. He read and wrote 
through life, but not till his later years did he give up his public serv- 
ice for literature. He was very sensibly educated; his parents fully 
appreciated his extraordinary gifts, but they never gave him the idea 
that he was out of the common run. They never handed his pro- 

1 The Marginal Notes of Lord Macaulay, p. 5. 

2 He was born at Rothley Temple, Oct. 25, 1800- 



14 INTRODUCTION. 

ductions about nor encouraged him to display his remarkable powers 
of memory. Except for these powers and a remarkable control of 
language, Tom Macaulay is described as " a good-natured boy, always 
occupied playing with his sisters without assumption of any kind." 
He went to a small private school, which his nephew and biographer 
consider to have been a great advantage because it kept him among 
his books, and away from a great many of the amusements and dis- 
tractions of the more active world of a great public school. 

As he grew up he wrote little more than was required by the exer- 
cises of the school, but read much. The thing is worth insisting on a 
little for it shows us how and why the pages of Macaulay's Essays are 
so full of references and allusions to literature and history. It should 
be mentioned, however, that he was always interested also in public 
affairs. His father, though not exactly what one might call a public 
man, was immensely interested in certain lines of public policy. He 
was one of the most earnest and devoted and hardworking of those 
who brought about the abolition of slavery in the British Empire, and 
although his son did not follow his father's interests entirely, yet he 
was by them in the way to get a good acquaintance with what was 
going on. 

Macaulay went to the University of Cambridge, where he was a 
member of Trinity College. The six years that he spent here in read- 
ing for the B. A. degree, and for a fellowship at Trinity, to which he 
was elected m the year 1824, were years very representative of his 
especial disposition and powers, and Trinity College was always very 
dear to him. For some years after leaving the university, Macaulay 
lived in London, ostensibly studying and practising law. But he had 
no love for the profession, and seems never to have thought seriously 
of it. It was at this time that he began to write for the Edinburgh 
Review. This review was at this time the leading literary periodical 
in Great Britain, but just now it was looking about for fresh genius 
to keep up its old reputation. It was in 1825 that Macaulay con- 
tributed his essay on Milton, which was immediately successful, and 
became the first of a long series of famous essays. In accordance 
with the custom of the time, Macaulay in writing for the Edinburgh 
Review by no means confined himself to the book which he took to 
review. After a few pages upon the book in question, he turned to 
the subject itself and gave his own account of it 1 . His very first 

1 The essay on Johnson here reprinted was not written for the Edinburgh Review, 
but was one of several short lives of different authors that Macaulay later in life 
wrote for the Encyclopedia Britannica. 



INTRODUCTION. 15 

essay in the Review was an immense success; it was eagerly read by 
all, and his reputation was assured. 

Macaulay's position was now most fortunate. He was a fellow of 
Trinity, which gave him something of an income; he wrote for the 
Edinburgh Review, which brought him a bit more; and he received 
the position of Commissioner of Bankruptcy, three things that gave 
him altogether about five thousand dollars a year. He was therefore 
not pushed by necessity and was able to consider plans for public life. 
"He longed to be taking his place in Parliament," writes his sister, 
a constant companion of those days, " but with a very hopeless long- 
ing." This hopelessness, however, came to an end in the year 1830, 
when Lord Lansdowne, who had been much struck by some articles 
by Macaulay on James Mill's theories of government, proposed that 
he should stand for the seat in Parliament for Calne, then vacant. It 
was at this time customary for men of position practically to name 
members of Parliament for certain places where they were themselves 
influential. This was, in some cases, as great an abuse as is the boss 
system at the present day, and constant efforts had been making in 
England to reform the electoral system of which it was a part. 
Macaulay, who thoroughly disapproved of the general system, took 
advantage of it in time to give his voice, influence, and vote to the 
Reform Act of 1832 which broke it up, by adjusting the representation 
more accurately to the population, and began the real reform of 
electoral conditions which has carried England so far on the road to 
real democracy. His entrance into Parliament was at a very ex- 
citing time, and Macaulay, full of knowledge and ideas, and on the 
right and winning side, naturally made a great impression both as a 
speaker and a worker. When the new system under the Reform Act 
came in, the borough of Calne was abolished, but Macaulay had be- 
come so well known by this time that he was urged to contest the 
borough of Edinburgh. He did so, was elected, and continued to 
represent the chief city of Scotland for many years. 

His life now was exactly what he liked, and was fit for, work in 
Parliament, work for the Edinburgh Review, as much as he chose of 
the higher social life of London, a family circle which he dearly loved; 
in these ways he lived a very happy life. There was one flaw in it, 
we may say, and that was only in his view of the future. His father 
was growing old; he had never been a wealthy man, and he had all 
his life devoted himself so earnestly to the Anti-slavery movement 
that he had never been able to think enough of his own affairs. 
Macaulay himself, though well off for a bachelor, was in no position 



16 INTRODUCTION. 

to support a mother and sisters. His fellowship at Trinity was com- 
ing to an end, he never had very much money from the Edinburgh 
Review, his work in Parliament had no salary, and he was unwilling 
to depend upon his salary as a member of the Government, for he 
felt that it took away from his independence. Under these circum- 
stances he took advantage of an offer made by the Government which 
was at that time reorganizing affairs in India. Macaulay was made 
the legal member of the Supreme Council of India, a position of great 
honor and of a salary that would in a few years give him a competence. 
He sailed for India February 15, 1834, with his sister Hannah, and 
remained there for four years. His work there, besides the regular 
duties of his position, had result in the Legal and Penal Codes of 
India. 

In the year 1838, Macaulay returned to England. His father was 
dead, and one of his sisters had married, but he was able to arrange 
most agreeably for the support of his mother and his other sisters, 
and thought to settle down to a literary life. He had of late written 
but few articles for the Edinburgh, and was thinking seriously about 
the History of England which he purposed to make the great work of 
his life. He was, however, led to re-enter public life, which compelled 
him to lay the project aside; he was elected to Parliament from Edin- 
burgh once more, and became Secretary of War in the Cabinet of 
Lord Melbourne. The Ministry did not last very long, but Macaulay 
retained his seat in Parliament until 1846, when he entered the Minis- 
try of Lord John Russell, as Paymaster-General of the Army. In the 
general election of 1847, however, he was defeated as a candidate for 
Edinburgh, and retired from public life. 

He was able now to work in earnest on his History. He was in 
many ways the one man best qualified to write an account of the 
history of England "from the accession of James II. down to a time 
which is within the memory of men still living." He was especially 
familiar with the history of the period and the literature; he was 
equally familiar with the methods and customs of English political 
life. He was accustomed to looking at things in a large way, to con- 
necting causes and effects, and to thinking over public problems, and 
he possessed a remarkable gift of expressing himself. His history 
was eagerly looked forward to, and when the first two volumes were 
published in 1852, it did not disappoint expectation. 

He had at this time recently been re-elected to Parliament by the 
borough of Edinburgh, where he had previously been defeated. His 
election had come in the most flattering way: not only without his 



INTRODUCTION. 17 

seeking, but without his even making any effort, without making a 
speech, or even visiting the city. In 1856, however, he resigned his 
seat, for he was already beginning to feel the effects of the years of 
severe work which he had done. 

In 1857 he was made a peer, becoming Baron Macaulay of Roth- 
ley Temple. He did not, however, long enjoy this honor, but died 
suddenly only two years after, on December 28, 1859. 

Macaulay as a Critic. 

Macaulay 's chief excellence is that of a historian rather than a 
critic: he is a historian of literature rather than a literary critic. 
He was himself conscious of this fact. On one occasion he wrote to 
Macvey Napier, the editor of the Edinburgh Review, as follows: " You 
will therefore believe that I tell you what I sincerely think when I 
say that I am not successful in analysing the effects of works of 
genius." He did not in so writing mean that he had no critical 
opinions, such was very far from being the case; he had opinions on 
the works of the great authors, indeed upon everything he read, and 
everything else. The books of his library, as has been said, are cov- 
ered with marginal comments, both as to subject and as to style. 
Nor are his essays without critical opinions, both general and particu- 
lar. In his first essay for the Edinburgh, that on Milton, we find the 
general opinion expressed that as civilization advances poetry de- 
clines. This is a general criticism of literature, a very broad generali- 
zation based on much reading and much thought. In that same 
essay we find also the statement of the difference between Milton and 
Dante, to the effect that one is broad and general in his imagination 
while the other is precise and particular. This may be called a special 
criticism, formed by reading and study of the special authors in 
question. In the essay in this book we have such opinions; for ex- 
example, " between Johnson and Juvenal there was much in common, 
much more certainly than between Pope and Horace." This is a 
statement that implies an opinion of the character and quality of the 
four authors concerned, as well as a comparison of them, and we are 
not to imagine that Macaulay had made any particular study for the 
purpose of making such a comparison; he constantly read the classics, 
both Latin and English, and his mind was such that he constantly 
and easily made the comparisons involved. As we go on in the essay 
we have some criticism on almost every one of Johnson's works, and 
at the end he pronounces an opinion on Johnson himself. 

Still, in spite of such passages, it is easy to see that Macaulay was 



18 INTRODUCTION. 

not pre-eminently a critic; the value of the essay does not lie in its 
critical views of Johnson's writings, or of Johnson himself. Macaulay 
was entirely right when he said that his especial power was not in the 
analysis of the effects of the works of genius. He might have gone 
further, and said that his especial power did not lie in the analysis 
or judgment of the works of genius themselves, or the essential char- 
acter of men of genius. It is not that he has nothing to say on such 
subjects, but that it is not to such subjects that he especially devotes 
himself. Thus his opinion of Johnson is summarized in the last words 
of the essay: that in spite of eccentricities of intellect and temper he 
was a great and good man. This is but what anybody might have 
said of anybody else. But we must not suppose that this was all 
that Macaulay had to say on Johnson. It was all he wished to say 
just here, but in the course of the essay, and in the other essay which 
he had devoted some years before to the life and character of Johnson, 
we find several more particular statements about the great author. 
Still, the main effort of the essay is not what we call critical. 

Macaulay, as has been said, was a historian rather than a critic, 
and his essays are little pieces of history or biography rather than of 
criticism, as more definitely understood. Macaulay did not analyze 
the elements of Johnson's character, nor of the works of his genius. 
He did just the opposite thing — he did not analyze, he put together. 
Out of its vast accumulations of literary history and biography of the 
18th century, he put together such details as make a fine and brilliant 
picture of the life of Johnson and of his time. Contrast the few 
critical judgments in the essay and the slight explanation of them, 
with the descriptions; look at p. 102, for instance, where he gives an 
account of the state of literature in Johnson's day, or p. 104. where he 
gives an account of Johnson's manners, or p. 109, where he tells of 
the Grub Street hacks, and many more. These are brilliant descriptive 
passages, full of statement and illustration. It is easy to see which 
kind of writing was most congenial to Macaulay. The giving a bril- 
liant and stimulating description or picture is something very dif- 
ferent from a critical opinion; we need not concern ourselves with the 
question which is better or greater; what we want just now is to un- 
derstand clearly just what Macaulay could do and what he tried to do. 
He could give a splendid account of an interesting matter. Of course 
his knowledge of the matter depended on all sorts of critical and other 
studies of his own, but the study is not apparent— we get only the 
careful result. 

So we can readily see the difference between Macaulay and one of 



INTRODUCTION. 19 

the critics of the generation after him, say Matthew Arnold or Walter 
Pater. Each of these writers when he wrote on an author had a definite 
view of the quality of his work and its value as literature, arid this 
view he wishes to explain. Thus in Arnold's essay on Wordsworth, 
or Pater's on the same subject, each critic had a particular conception 
of Wordsworth's quality, the especial character of his genius. They 
pay little attention to the facts of his life ; their aim is rather to speak 
of his place in literature. Macaulay's aim is different; he wishes to 
give an account of the life and writings of Johnson, It is true that 
he was writing in this case for the Encyclopedia Britannica, and an 
encyclopedia is more likely to need an account of the life and writings 
of anyone than an estimate of his especial genius, though both have 
their place. But it was not because he was writing for the Encyclo- 
pedia Britannica that Macaulay wrote such an account as this. It 
was because this was the particular kind of writing in which he was 
most at home. His essays for the Edinburgh are rarely criticisms of 
the book they are supposed to review. As we have said, they usually 
give a few pages to the book and then give Macaulay's own account 
and estimate of the author in question, and though not, as he himself 
perceived, particularly analytic in their critical utterances, they are 
unrivalled as brilliant and interesting accounts of great men of letters, 
and they have been the means of attracting and introducing thou- 
sands to the study of literature. 

Macaulay's Style. 

It is proper in a book like this to say a word or two about Macau- 
lay's style, because it is something very characteristic of the man, and 
something that has interested many people and that may be useful to 
any student in helping him to learn how to write well himself. One 
would hardly try to write like Macaulay, but one may readily try to 
gain some of his particular merits. 

We cannot give more than a descriptive statement of the most 
general characteristics of this great master and we may well begin 
with his vocabulary. The words that he uses are almost always sim- 
ple and ordinary, words such as everybody uses, only he seems to 
have a very great command of them. He does not, like Johnson, use 
very long words, or especially words of Latin origin. He does not, 
like Carlyle, use some rather out-of-the-way words, that give a curious, 
oven old time, character to his writing. He does not, like some later 
writers, seem to search out words that nobody else ever heard of. 
Yet with his great memory and his broad reading, he could have had 



20 INTRODUCTION. 

at command more words than anyone we can think of. But he 
wished to be understood by everyone and so he used ordinary words. 

His sentences are on the average short. From early times the 
length of English sentences has been growing shorter and shorter. 
In the seventeenth century writers began to be more careful in the 
grammatical structure of their sentences, so that what used, often 
enough, to be formless aggregations of clause piled upon clause, be- 
came what we think of as definitely formed sentences. Then these 
sentences, by the end of the eighteenth century, began to be made 
shorter, and by the time of Macaulay, perhaps partly through his 
own practice, the average sentence-length was very short. The 
average length of Macaulay's sentences is only twenty-four words. 
Since his day the general tendency has been to write them rather 
longer, but by no means as long as the sentences of four hundred years 
ago. This short sentence-length of Macaulay, like his choice of words, 
is a great help to his being easily understood. It has several reasons, 
but probably that is the main one — Macaulay's desire to be clear was 
very great, and doubtless the short sentence-length was one of the 
means he used to that end. Not much need be said of Macaulay's 
paragraphs, except that in common with most good writers of the 
nineteenth century, he was careful about this matter, feeling perhaps 
that it was a means by which he might help to make his thought 
clearer and plainer. Students have determined a number of artifices, 
as they are called, in his paragraph-structure, but they are not so im- 
portant as to call for especial attention here. 

Macaulay's chief qualities are that clearness, which we have already 
mentioned, and that form of force that we call brilliancy. Although 
his writing is clear, we should hardly call it luminous; we should 
rather call it brilliant. Both words are figures borrowed from the 
sort of light shed by some object or other. Macaulay's work does 
not have the calm light-giving quality of the candle or the lamp, of 
the moon or the sun ; it is rather like the powerful electric or calcium 
light, or sometimes even the astonishing brilliancy of fireworks. It 
would be difficult to show just how this particular effect is produced. 
One means is the general shortness of the sentences. A short sentence 
by itself is not especially brilliant, but we can see that a short sentence 
may give a crisp, smart effect that would be impossible for a long one, 
or, more accurately, a number of short sentences mingled with some 
long ones are more effective than long ones alone. But besides the 
sentence-length, and much more important, is the general habit of 
balance and antithesis, sometimes in a balanced sentence, sometimes 



INTRODUCTION. 21 

in two sentences, sometimes appearing in part of a sentence with the 
idea only. Here are examples of each kind: 

" Literature had ceased to flourish under the patronage of the great, 
and had not begun to flourish under the patronage of the public." 
P. 103. 

One sees here how each word in the second half is balanced against 
some word in the first half. Sometimes this balance is arranged in 
two sentences, as follows: 

"Sudden prosperity had turned Garrick's head. Continued ad- 
versity had soured Johnson's temper." P. 113. 

Often the contrast does not influence the sentence-form, as in the 
following between the present miserable condition of Savage and the 
gaiety and glory of his earlier life. 

"He had an inexhaustible store of anecdotes about that gay and 
brilliant world from which he was now an outcast." P. 110. 

This contrast and antithesis is a well-known habit, or even manner- 
ism, of Macaulay. But it is not by such devices only that he gave 
his style character. Another means deeply founded in his thought 
and his knowledge is his frequent illustration and constant use of the 
concrete. He is not a figurative writer, but he was continually illus- 
trating what he had to say by real comparisons and by examples. 
Almost any page of Macaulay will show us this characteristic. " The 
prejudices which he brought up to London," he writes of Johnson, 
"were scarcely less absurd than those of his own Tom Tempest." 
P. 106. That sentence is put in a telling way even if we do not happen 
to know just how absurd Tom Tempest was, and it is more effective 
if we do know. 

Besides these things there was a decision and a definiteness to his 
ideas that impresses one; there is a wide knowledge, but there is also 
a definiteness in his statement. "He hated dissenters and stock 
jobbers, the excise and the army, septennial parliaments and con- 
tinental connections." P. 107. In that sentence there is not only 
wide knowledge, for each word implies much concerning English 
history, but there is a sureness and conciseness of expression that 
impresses one. And these last examples show one thing of import- 
ance; namely, that Macaulay 's characteristics of style were ultimately 
founded in the ways in which he thought. And as he was a brilliant 
thinker so he was a brilliant writer. 



ROBERT BURNS 

In the modern arrangements of society, it is no uncommon 
thing that a man of genius must, like Butler/ "ask for bread 
and receive a stone f for, in spite of our grand maxim of sup- 
ply and demand, it is by no means the highest excellence that 
men are most forward to recognize. The inventor of a spin- 
ning-jenny is pretty sure of his reward in his own day; bui? 
the writer of a true poem, like the apostle of a true religion, 
is nearly as sure of the contrary. 2 We do not know whether- 
it is not an aggravation of the injustice, that there is generally 
a posthumous retribution. 3 Eobert Burns, in the course 
of Nature, might yet have been living 4 ; but his short life was 
spent in toil and penury; and he died, in the prime of his 
manhood, miserable and neglected: and yet already a brave 5 
mausoleum shines over his dust, and more than one splendid 
monument has been reared in other places to his fame; the 
street where he languished in poverty is called by his name; 
the highest personages in our literature have been proud to 
appear as his commentators and admirers; and here is the 
sixth narrative of his Life that has been given to the world ! 

Mr. Lockhart 6 thinks it necessary to apologize for this new 

1 Samuel Butler, 1612-1680, was the * Burns was born in 1759, and at the 
author of Hudibras, an immensely popu- time of Carlyle's writing (1828) would 
lar satire; in spite of its popularity, how- have been only sixty-nine years old; as 
ever, he died in want. it was he died at the age of thirty-seven. 

2 Carlyle means that the person who 6 The word is used ironically, w.'th the 
will do something for our material meaning of fine, excellent. 

nature, like making clothes cheaper, will 6 John Gibson Lockhart, 1794-1854, 

be rewarded even though he be not a was a literary figure of importance in the 

man of genius. early years of the nineteenth ce ltury; 

8 Namely, that succeeding generations he is now best known as the biogiapher 

will honor one not honored in his life- of Sir Walter Scott. 
time. 



24 ROBERT BURNS 

attempt on such a subject: but his readers, we believe, will 
readily acquit him; or, at worst, will censure only the per- 
formance of his task, not the choice of it. The character of 
Burns, indeed, is a theme that cannot easily become either 
trite or exhausted; and will probably gain rather than lose 
in its dimensions by the distance to which it is removed by 
Time. No man, it has been said, is a hero to his valet; and 
this is probably true; but the fault is at least as likely to be 
the valet's as the hero's. For it is certain, that to the vulgar 
eye few things are wonderful that are not distant. It is 
difficult for men to believe that the man, the mere man whom 
they see, nay perhaps painfully feel, toiling at their side 
through the poor jostlings of existence, can be made of finer 
clay than themselves. 1 Suppose that some dining acquaint- 
ance of Sir Thomas Lucy's and neighbor of John-a-Combe's, 
had snatched an hour or two from the preservation of his 
game, and written us a Life of Shakespeare ! 2 What disserta- 
tions should we not have had, — not on Hamlet and The 
Tempest, but on the wool-trade, and deer-stealing, and the 
libel and vagrant laws; and how the Poacher became a 
Player; and how Sir Thomas and Mr. John had Christian 
bowels, 3 and did not push him to extremities ! In like man- 
ner, we believe, with respect to Burns, that till the compan- 
ions of his pilgrimage, 4 the Honorable Excise Commissioners, 
and the Gentlemen of the Caledonian Hunt, and the Dumfries 
Aristocracy, and all the Squires and Earls, equally with the 
Ayr Writers, and the New and the Old Light Clergy, whom he 

1 Rather an ungracious temper, one meaning is that they would have been 
would say; why should we not recognize very unlikely to recognize the real ge- 
excellence in our fellows? nius of Shakespeare. 

2 Sir Thomas Lucy was a gentleman 3 or, as we should say now, heart. A 
who lived near Stratford in the days of curious expression, but Carlyle uses it 
Shakespeare, and John-a-Combe was a because it was not so uncommon in the 
citizen of Stratford. Satirical verses on time of Elizabeth, and it may be found 
both have been preserved which are at- in the Bible. 

tributed to Shakespeare. Carlyle's 4 our earthly life. 



ROBERT BURNS 25 

had to do with, 1 shall have become invisible in the darkness 
of the Past, or visible only by light borrowed from his 
juxtaposition, it will be difficult to measure him by any 
true standard, or to estimate what he really was and did, in 
the eighteenth century, for his country and the world. It 
will be difficult, we say; but still a fair problem for literary 
historians; and repeated attempts will give us repeated ap- 
proximations. 

His former biographers have done something, no doubt, 
but by no means a great deal, to assist us. Dr. Currie and 
Mr. Walker, the principal of these writers, 2 have both, we 
think, mistaken one essentially important thing: Their own 
and the world's true relation to their author, and the style in 
which it became such men to think and to speak of such a 
man. Dr. Currie loved the poet truly; more perhaps than 
he avowed to his readers, or even to himself; yet he every- 
where introduces him with a certain patronizing, apologetic 
air; as if the polite public might think it strange and half 
unwarrantable that he, a man of science, a scholar and gen- 
tleman, should do such honor to a rustic. In all this, how- 
ever, we readily admit that his fault was not want of love, 
but weakness of faith ; and regret that the first and kindest 
of all our poet's biographers should not have seen farther, or 
believed more boldly what he saw. Mr. Walker offends more 
deeply in the same kind: and both err alike in presenting 
us with a detached catalogue of his several supposed attributes, 
virtues and vices, instead of a delineation of the resulting 
character as a living unity. 3 This, however, is not painting 

J Carlyle thinks of the people Burns lished in 1800, Walker's in 1811. Each 

had to do with. Burns became a gauger prefixed to the poems a short life of the 

under the Excise Commissioners; his poet. 

poems were dedicated to "the noblemen 3 Carlyle means that neither Currie 
and gentlemen of the Caledonian Hunt"; nor Walker understood the true great- 
writers were attorneys; New and Old ness of Burns, although they may have 
ft* r j Jfer to a theological separation been aware of the facts of his life and 
oi which more may be read on p. 67. the qualities of character which he ex- 



Currie's edition of Burns was pub- 



hibited. 



26 ROBERT BURNS 

a portrait; but gauging the length and breadth of the several 
features, and jotting down their dimensions in arithmetical 
ciphers. Nay it is not so much as that: for we are yet to 
learn by what arts or instruments the mind could be so meas- 
ured and gauged. 

Mr. Lockhart, we are happy to say, has avoided both these 
errors. He uniformly treats Burns as the high and remark- 
able man the public voice has now pronounced him to be: and 
in delineating him, he has avoided the method of separate 
generalities, and rather Bought for characteristic incidents, 
habits, actions, sayings: in a word, for aspects which exhibit 
the whole man, as he looked and lived among his fellows. 
The book accordingly, with all its deficiencies, gives more 
insight, we think, into the true character of Burns, than any 
prior biography: though, being written on the very popular 
and condensed scheme of an article for Constable's Miscel- 
lany, 1 it has less depth than we could have wished and ex- 
pected from a writer of such power: and contains rather 
more, and more multifarious, quotations than belong of right 
to an original production. Indeed, Mr. Lockhart's own writ- 
ing is generally so good, so clear, direct and nervous, that we 
seldom wish to see it making place for another man's. How- 
ever, the spirit of the work is throughout candid, tolerant 
and anxiously conciliating: compliments and praises are lib- 
erally distributed, on all hands, to great and small; and, as 
Mr. Morris Birkbeck observes of the society in the backwoods 
of America, "the courtesies of polite life are never lost sight 
of for a moment." But there are better things than these in 
the volume: and we can safely testify, not only that it is 
easily and pleasantly read a first time, but may even be with- 
out difficulty read again. 

Nevertheless, we are far from thinking that the problem of 
Burns's Biography has yet been adequately solved. We do 

1 a series of books for popular reading. 



ROBERT BURNS 27 

not allude so much to deficiency of facts or documents, — 
though of these we are still every day receiving some fresh 
accession, — as to the limited and imperfect application of 
them to the great end of Biography. 1 Our notions upon this 
subject may perhaps appear extravagant; but if an individual 
is really of consequence enough to have his life and character 
recorded for public remembrance, we have always been of 
opinion that the public ought to be made acquainted with all 
the inward springs and relations of his character. How did 
the world and man's life, from his particular position, repre- 
sent themselves to his mind? How did coexisting circum- 
stances modify him from without; how did he modify these 
from within? With what endeavors and what efficacy rule 
over them ; with what resistance and what suffering sink 
under thorn? In one word, what and how produced was the 
effect of society on him; what and how produced was his 
effect on society? He who should answer these questions, in 
regard to any individual, would, as we believe, furnish a 
model of perfection in Biography. Few individuals, indeed, 
can deserve such a study; and many lives will be written, 
and, for the gratification of innocent curiosity, ought to be 
written, and read and forgotten, which are not in this sense 
biographies. But Burns if we mistake not, is one of these 
few individuals; and such a study, at least with such a result, 
he has not yet obtained. Our own contributions to it, we are 
aware, can be but scanty and feeble ; but we offer them with 
good-will, and trust they may meet with acceptance from 
those they are intended for. 

Burns first came upon the world as a prodigy ; and was, in 
that character, entertained by it, in the usual fashion, with 

1 Carlyle's conception of biography few lines below, is a statement of exter- 

was one of the most important elements nal facts, but a real biography goes 

In his thinking. Here he gives an early deeper, for one thing, for it must show 

sketch of the conception which he finally us the man's character, his inward life, 

worked out in his great biography of and it goes broader, too, for it must 

Frederick the Great. A life, he says a show also his connection with his time. 



28 ROBERT BURNS 

loud, vague, tumultuous wonder, speedily subsiding into cen- 
sure and neglect; till his early and most mournful death 
again awakened an enthusiasm for him, which, especially as 
there was now nothing to be done, and much to be spoken, 
has prolonged itself even to our own time. It is true, the 
"nine days" 1 have long since elapsed; and the very continu- 
ance of this clamor proves that Burns was no vulgar wonder. 
Accordingly, even in sober judgments, where, as years passed 
by, he has come to rest more and more exclusively on his own 
intrinsic merits, and may now be well-nigh shorn of that 
casual radiance, he appears not only as a true British poet, 
but as one of the most considerable British men of the eight- 
eenth century. 2 Let it not be objected that he did little. He 
did much, if we consider where and how. If the work per- 
formed was small, we must remember that he had his very 
materials to discover; for the metal he worked in lay hid 
under the desert moor, where no eye but his had guessed its 
existence; and we may almost say, that with his own hand 
he had to construct the tools for fashioning it. For he found 
himself in deepest obscurity, without help, without instruc- 
tion, without model ; or with models only of the meanest sort. 
An educated man stands, as it wore, in the midst of a bound- 
less arsenal and magazine, filled with all the weapons and 
engines which man's skill has been able to devise from the 
earliest time; and he works, accordingly, with a strength 
borrowed from all past ages. How different is his state who 
stands on the outside of that storehouse, and fools that its 
gates must be stormed, or remain forever shut against him! 
His means are the commonest and rudest; the mere work 
done is no measure of his strength. A dwarf behind his 
steam-engine may remove mountains; but no dwarf will hew 

1 "A nine-days' wonder" is a popular ing, Johnson, Wesley, Hume were very 
phrase. great men in different lines. Carlyle 

2 The eighteenth century in England says that Burns is :»s well worth con- 
produced some considerable men, — for sidering as any of them. 

instance, Chatham, Burke, Fox, Field- 



ROBERT BURNS 29 

them down with a pickaxe; and he must be a Titan that 
hurls them abroad with his arms. 

It is in this last shape that Burns presents himself. 1 Born 
in an age the most prosaic Britain had yet seen, and in a 
condition the most disadvantageous, where his mind, if it 
accomplished aught, must accomplish it under the pressure 
of continual bodily toil, nay of penury and desponding appre- 
hension of the worst evils, and with no furtherance but such 
knowledge as dwells in a poor man's hut, and the rhymes of 
a Ferguson or Eamsay 2 for his standard of beauty, he sinks 
not under all these impediments : through the fogs and dark- 
ness of that obscure region, his tynx eye discerns the true 
relations of the world and human life; he grows into intel- 
lectual strength, and trains himself into intellectual expert- 
ness. Impelled by the expansive movement of his own irre- 
pressible soul, he struggles forward into the general view; 
and with haughty modesty lays down before us, as the fruit 
of his labor, a gift, which Time has now pronounced im- 
perishable. Add to all this, that his darksome drudging child- 
hood and youth was by far the kindliest era of his whole life ; 
and that he died in his thirty-seventh year: and then ask if 
it be strange that his poems are imperfect, and of small ex- 
tent, or that his genius attained no mastery in its art. Alas, 
his Sun shone as through a tropical tornado ; and the pale 
Shadow of Death eclipsed it at noon ! Shrouded in such bale- 
ful vapors, the genius of Burns was never seen in clear azure 
splendor, enlightening the world: but some beams from it 
did, by fits, pierce through; and it tinted those clouds with 
rainbow and orient colors, into a glory and stern grandeur, 
which men silently gazed on with wonder and tears ! 3 

We are anxious not to exaggerate; for it is exposition 

■ t. e., as a Titan, for he did his work Scottish poets, 

without the help of education, social 3 This passage expresses in rather a 

culture, or influence. figurative way Burns's struggle with the 

2 Allan Ramsay (16S5-175S), and difficulties of his surroundings. 
Robert Ferguson (.1 750-1774), were two 



30 ROBERT BURNS 

rather than admiration 1 that our readers require of us here; 
and yet to avoid some tendency to that side is no easy mat- 
ter. We love Burns, and we pity him ; and love and pity are 
prone to magnify. Criticism, it is sometimes thought, should 
be a cold business; we are not so sure of this; but, at all 
events, our concern with Burns is not exclusively that of 
critics. True and genial as his poetry must appear, it is not 
chiefly as a poet, but as a man, that he interests and affects 
us. He was often advised to write a tragedy : time and means 
were not lent him for this; but through life he enacted a 
tragedy, and one of the deepest. 2 We question whether the 
world has since witnessed so utterly sad a scene; whether 
Napoleon himself, left to brawl with Sir Hudson Lowe 3 and 
perish on his rock, "amid the melancholy main," presented 
to the reflecting mind such a "spectacle of pity and fear" as 
did this intrinsically nobler, gentler and perhaps greater soul, 
wasting itself away in a hopeless struggle with base entangle- 
ments, which coiled closer and closer round him, till only 
death opened him an outlet. Conquerors are a class of men 
with whom, for most part, the world could well dispense ; nor 
can the hard intellect, the unsympathizing loftiness and high 
but selfish enthusiasm of such persons inspire us in general 
with any affection; at best it may excite amazement; and 
their fall, like that of a pyramid, will be beheld with a certain 
sadness and awe. But a true Poet, a man in whose heart 
resides some effluence of Wisdom, some tone of the "Eternal 
Melodies," is the most precious gift that can be bestowed on 
a generation: we see in him a freer, purer development of 
whatever is noblest in ourselves; his life is a rich lesson to 
us ; and we mourn his death as that of a benefactor who loved 
and taught us. 4 

» to explain rather than to praise. 3 ^e English governor of St. Helena, 

2 A tragedy, as the word is used here, when Napoleon was confined there, 

is one of those sad episodes of life in 4 Note Carlyle's idea of a poet: some- 

which powers that might have made for thing much more than a man who can 

great good in the world, somehow come write verses, see p. 39. 
to nothing or only to evil. 



ROBERT BURNS 31 

Such a gift had Nature, in her bounty, bestowed on us in 
Robert Burns; but with queenlike indifference she cast it 
from her hand, like a thing of no moment; and it was de- 
faced and torn asunder, as an idle bauble, before we recog- 
nized it. To the ill-starred Burns was given the power of 
making man's life more venerable, 1 but that of wisely guiding 
his own life was not given. Destiny, — for so in our ignorance 
we must speak, — his faults, the faults of others, proved too 
hard for him ; and that spirit, which might have soared could 
it but have walked, soon sank to the dust, its glorious facul- 
ties trodden under foot in the blossom; and died, we may 
almost say, without even having lived. And so kind and 
warm a soul; so full of inborn riches, of love to all living 
and lifeless things! How his heart flows out in sympathy 
over universal Nature; and in her bleakest provinces dis- 
cerns a beauty and a meaning! The "Daisy" falls not un- 
heeded under his plowshare; nor the ruined nest of that 
"wee, cowering, timorous beastie," 2 cast forth, after all its 
provident pains to "thole the sleety dribble and cranreuch 3 
cauld." The "hoar visage" of winter delights him: he 
dwells with a sad and oft-returning fondness in these scenes 
of solemn desolation; but the voice of the tempest becomes 
an anthem to his ears; he loves to walk in the sounding 
woods, for "it raises his thoughts to Him that walheth on 
the wings of the wind." A true Poet-soul, for it needs but 
to be struck, and the sound it yields will be music. But 
observe him chiefly as he mingles with his brother men. 
What warm, all-comprehending fellow-feeling; what trust- 
ful, boundless love ; what generous exaggeration of the object 
loved ! His rustic friend, his nut-brown maiden, are no 
longer mean and homely, but a hero and a queen, whom he 



1 more fine, worthy and to be ad- a Mountain Daisy, On Turning One 

mired. Down With the Plow, and To a Mouse. 

1 These references are, of course, to 3 hoar-frost, 

the poems of Burns: those entitled, To 



32 ROBERT BURNS 

prizes as the paragons of Earth. The rough scenes of Scottish 
life, not seen by him in any Arcadian 1 illusion, but in the 
rude contradiction, in the smoke and soil of a too harsh 
reality, are still lovely to him: Poverty is indeed his com- 
panion, but Love also, and Courage; the simple feelings, the 
worth, the nobleness, that dwell under the straw roof, are 
dear and venerable to his heart: and thus over the lowest 
provinces of man's existence he pours the glory of his own 
soul; and they rise, in shadow and sunshine, softened and 
brightened into a beauty which other eyes discern not in the 
highest. He has a just self -consciousness, which too often 
degenerates into pride; yet it is a noble pride, for defense, 
not for offense; no cold suspicious feeling, but a frank and 
social one. The Peasant Poet bears himself, we might say, 
like a King in exile: he is cast among the low, and feels 
himself equal to the highest; yet he claims no rank, that 
none may be disputed to him. The forward he can repel, the 
supercilious he can subdue; pretensions of wealth or ancestry 
are of no avail with him; there is a fire in that dark eye, 
under which the "insolence of condescension" cannot thrive. 
In his abasement, in his extreme need, he forgets not for a 
moment the majesty of Poetry and Manhood. And yet, far 
as he feels himself above common men, he wanders not apart 
from them, but mixes warmly in their interests ; nay throws 
himself into their arms, and, as it were, entreats them to love 
him. It is moving to see how, in his darkest despondency, 
this proud being still seeks relief from friendship ; unbosoms 
himself, often to the unworthy, and, amid tears, strains to 
his glowing heart a heart that knows only the name of 
friendship. And yet he was "quick to learn" ; a man of keen 
vision, before whom common disguises afforded no conceal- 
ment. His understanding saw through the hollowness even 

1 Arcadia is the traditional land (in means that Burns presents no such 
the poets' geography) of charming, rus- traditional conventionality, but the 
tic, secluded country life. Carlyle true country life as he knew it himself. 



ROBERT BURNS 33 

of accomplished deceivers; but there was a generous credulity 

Z- I , \ AUd Z f d ° Ur PeaSant sh ™ himBdf among 
us a soul like an ^olian harp, in whose strings the vulgar 
wind as it passed through them, changed itself into articulate 

torh- , hlS ^ ^ f ° r Wh ° m the ™ ld *«»* no 
fitter business than quarrelling with smugglers and vintners 

computing excise-dues upon tallow, and gauging ale-barrels n' 

In such toils was that mighty Spirit sorrowfully^ wasted: and 

^hundred years may pass on, before another Jch is given us 

All that remains of Burns, the Writings he has left, seem to 

tTo; J\ T ed ab T' no more than a P° 0r ™^ *£ 

tion of what was in him; brief, broken glimpses of a genius 
hat could never show itself complete; that wanted all things 
fr completeness: culture, leisure, true effort, nay even lengfh 
of life. His poems are, with scarcely any exception, mere 
occasional effusions/ poured forth with little preLdi ation 
expressing by such means as offered, the passion, opinion or^ 
humor of the hour. Never in one instance was t permuted 

s» g T 6 Wlth r u bJeCt Wift ^ M -"ectfonTh t 
JenTus To t K a l T^ " * ^ c °n^trated fire of his 
genius. To try by the strict rules of Art such imperfect frao- 
ments would be at once unprofitable and unfair" Net he 
ess there is something in these poems, marred and defective 
as hey are, which forbids the most fastidious student 
poetry to pass them by. Some sort of enduring quality hey 
must have: for after fifty years of the wildest vicissitudes n 
poetic taste, they still continue to be read; nay, are read mo e 
and more eagerly, more and more extensively and this not 
only by literary virtuosos, and that class upo'n whom " 

liquor tax. , na PP ened to turn up a daisy with his 

•poems <hat B ur „s produced o„ atd^oUt ^tnT'' ^ ""' 



34 ROBERT BURNS 

tory causes operate most strongly, but by all classes, down to 
the most hard, unlettered and truly natural class, who read 
little, and especially no poetry, except because they find 
pleasure in it. The grounds of so singular and wide a popu- 
larity, which extends, in a literal sense, from the palace to 
the hut, and over all regions where the English tongue is 
spoken, are well worth inquiring into. After every just 
deduction, it seems to imply some rare excellence in these 
works. What is that excellence? 

To answer this question will not lead us far. The excel- 
lence of Burns is, indeed, among the rarest, whether in poetry 
or prose; but, at the same time, it is plain and easily recog- 
nized: his Sincerity, his indisputable air of Truth. 1 Here 
are no fabulous woes or joys; no hollow fantastic sentimen- 
talities ; no wiredrawn refinings, either in thought or feeling : 
the passion that is traced before us has glowed in a living 
heart ; the opinion he utters has risen in his own understand- 
ing, and been a light to his own steps. He does not write 
from hearsay, but from sight and experience; it is the scenes 
that he has lived and labored amidst, that he describes : those 
scenes, rude and humble as they are, have kindled beautiful 
emotions in his soul, noble thoughts, and definite resolves; 
and he speaks forth what is in him, not from any outward 
call of vanity or interest, but because his heart is too full 
to be silent. He speaks it with such melody and modulation 
as he can; "in homely rustic jingle;" but it is his own, and 
genuine. This is the grand secret for finding readers and 
retaining them : let him who would move and convince others, 
be first moved and convinced himself. Horace's rule, Si vis 
me fiere, 2 is applicable in a wider sense than the literal one. 

1 A fundamental idea with Carlyle and Carlyle admired the men of reality 

was the value of truth, fact, sincerity, who appeared in it, like Frederick the 

reality; under all sorts of names does Great, Samuel Johnson, Robert Burns. 

he present the thought. The eight- 2 From the Art of Poetry by Horace, 

eenth century, he holds, was a false, "If you wish me to grieve, you must 

hypocritical, lying, conventional time, first know sorrow yourself." 



ROBERT BURNS 35 

To every poet, to every writer, we might say : Be true, if you 
would be believed. Let a man but speak forth with genuine 
earnestness the thought, the emotion, the actual condition of 
his own heart; and other men, so strangely are we all knit 
together by the tie of sympathy, must and will give heed to 
him. In culture, in extent of view, we may stand above the 
speaker, or below him; but in either case, his words, if they 
are earnest and sincere, will find some response within 
us; for in spite of all casual varieties in outward rank 
or inward, as face answers to face, so does the heart 
of man to man. 

This may appear a very simple principle, and one which 
Burns had little merit in discovering. True, the discovery 
is easy enough: but the practical appliance is not easy; is 
indeed the fundamental difficulty which all poets have to 
strive with, and which scarcely one in the hundred ever fairly 
surmounts. A head too dull to discriminate the true from 
the false; a heart too dull to love the one at all risks, and to 
hate the other in spite of all temptations, are alike fatal to 
a writer. With either, or as more commonly happens, with 
both of these deficiencies combine a love of distinction, a 
wish to be original, which is seldom wanting, and we have 
Affectation, the bane of literature, as Cant, 1 its elder brother, 
is of morals. How often does the one and the other front us, 
in poetry, as in life! Great poets themselves are not always 
free of this vice; nay, it is precisely on a certain sort and 
degree of greatness that it is most commonly ingrafted. A 
strong effort after excellence will sometimes solace itself with 
a mere shadow of success; he who has much to unfold, will 
sometimes unfold it imperfectly. Byron, for instance, was 
no common man : yet if we examine his poetry with this view, 
we shall find it far enough from faultless. Generally speak- 
ing, we should say that it is not true. He refreshes us, not 

1 two great enemies of Carlyle. 



36 ROBERT BURNS 

with the divine fountain, but too often with vulgar strong 
waters stimulating indeed to the taste, but soon ending in 
dislike, or even nausea. Are his Harolds and Giaours, 1 we 
would ask, real men; we mean, poetically consistent and con- 
ceivable men ? Do not these characters, does not the character 
of their author, which more or less shines through them all, 
rather appear a thing put on for the occasion ; no natural or 
possible mode of being, but something intended to look much 
grander than nature ? Surely, all these stormful agonies, this 
volcanic heroism, superhuman contempt and moody despera- 
tion, with so much scowling, and teeth-gnashing, and other 
sulphurous humor, is more like the brawling of a player in 
some paltry tragedy, which is to last three hours, than the 
bearing of a man in the business of life, which is to last 
threescore and ten years. 2 To our minds there is a taint of 
this sort, something which we should call theatrical, false, 
affected, in every one of these otherwise so powerful pieces. 
Perhaps Don Juan, especially the latter parts of it, is the only 
thing approaching to a sincere work, he ever wrote; the only 
work where he showed himself, in any measure, as he was ; 
and seemed so intent on his subject as, for moments, to for- 
get himself. 3 Yet Byron hated this vice; we believe, heartily 
detested it : nay, he had declared formal war against it in 
words. So difficult is it even for the strongest to make this 
primary attainment, which might seem the simplest of all : to 
read its own consciousness without mistakes, without errors 
involuntary or willful ! We recollect no poet of Burns's sus- 
ceptibility who comes before us from the first, and abides with 
us to the last, with such a total want of affectation. He is 

1 These heroes of Byron's poems, as depicting himself. It is probable that 
well as others, are often spoken of as Carlyle, who heartily disliked Byron's 
merely himself in various costumes, not morality, or rather lack of morality 
real men. came to see in Byron various other 

2 Even though Byron depicted him- evils, see p. 80. 

self in his heroes, yet, Carlyle would say, 3 writing as he really felt, 

he was not thoroughly sincere even in 



ROBERT BURNS 37 

an honest man, and an honest writer. In his successes and 
his failures, in his greatness and his littleness, he is ever 
clear, simple, true, and glitters with no luster but his own. 
We reckon this to be a great virtue; to be, in fact, the root 
of most other virtues, literary as well as moral. 

Here, however, let us say it is to the Poetry of Burns that 
we now allude ; to those writings which he had time to medi- 
tate, and where no special reason existed to warp his critical 
feeling, or obstruct his endeavor to fulfill it. Certain of his 
Letters, and other fractions of prose composition, by no means 
deserve this praise. Here, doubtless, there is not the same 
natural truth of style; but on the contrary, something not 
only stiff, but strained and twisted; a certain high-flown, 
inflated tone ; the stilting emphasis of which contrasts ill with 
the firmness and rugged simplicity of even his poorest verses. 
Thus no man, it would appear, is altogether unaffected. Does 
not Shakespeare himself sometimes premeditate the sheerest 
bombast! But even with regard to these Letters of Burns, 
it is but fair to state that he had two excuses. The first was 
his comparative deficiency in language. Burns, though for 
most part he writes with singular force and even gracefulness, 
is not master of English prose, as he is of Scottish verse ; not 
master of it, we mean, in proportion to the depth and vehe- 
mence of his matter. These Letters strike us as the effort of a 
man to express something which he has no organ fit for ex- 
pressing. But a second and weightier excuse is to be found 
in the peculiarity of Burns's social rank. His correspondents 
are often men whose relation to him he has never accurately 
ascertained; whom therefore he is either forearming himself 
against, or else unconsciously flattering, by adopting the style 
he thinks will please them. At all events, we should remem- 
ber that these faults, even in his Letters, are not the rule, 
but the exception. Whenever he writes, as one would ever 
wish to do, to trusted friends and on real interests, his style 



38 ROBERT BURNS 

becomes simple, vigorous, expressive, sometimes even beauti- 
ful. His letters to Mrs. Dunlop 1 are uniformly excellent. 

But we return to his Poetry. In addition to its Sincerity, 
it has another peculiar merit, which indeed is but a mode, or 
perhaps a means, of the foregoing: this displays itself in his 
choice of subjects; or rather in his indifference as to subjects, 
and the power he has of making all subjects interesting. The 
ordinary poet, like the ordinary man, is forever seeking in 
external circumstances the help which can be found only in 
himself. In what is familiar and near at hand, he discerns no 
form or comeliness 2 : home is not poetical but prosaic ; it is 
in some past, distant, conventional heroic world, that poetry 
resides; were he there and not here, were he thus and not so, 
it would be well with him. Hence our innumerable host of 
rose-colored Novels and iron-mailed Epics, 3 with their locality 
not on the Earth, but somewhere nearer to the Moon. Hence 
our Virgins of the Sun, and our Knights of the Cross, 
malicious Saracens in turbans, and copper-colored Chiefs in 
wampum, and so many other truculent figures from the heroic 
times or the heroic climates, who on all hands swarm in our 
poetry. Peace be with them! But yet, as a great moralist 
proposed preaching to the men of this century, so would we 
fain preach to the poets, "a sermon on the duty of staying at 
home." Let them be sure that heroic ages and heroic climates 
can do little for them. That form of life has attraction for 
us, less because it is better or nobler than our own, than sim- 
ply because it is different; and even this attraction must be 
of the most transient sort. For will not our own age, one 
day be an ancient one; and have as quaint a costume as the 
rest ; not contrasted with the rest, therefore, but ranked along 
with them, in respect of quaintness ? Does Homer interest us 
now, because he wrote of what passed beyond his native 

1 Mrs. Dunlop was a lady whom 2 a reminiscence of Isaiah liii. 2. 

Burns met during his visit to Edin- 3 the fashionable literature of the 

burgh. day. 



ROBERT BURNS 39 

Greece, and two centuries before he was born; or because he 
wrote what passed in God's world, and in the heart of man, 
which is the same after thirty centuries ? Let our poets look 
to this: is their feeling really finer, truer, and their vision 
deeper than that of other men, — they have nothing to fear, 
even from the humblest subject; is it not so, — they have 
nothing to hope, but an ephemeral favor, even from the 
highest. 1 

The poet, we imagine, can never have far to seek for a 
subject: the elements of his art are in him, and around him 
on every hand; for him the Ideal world is not remote from 
the Actual, but under it and within it: nay, he is a poet, 
precisely because he can discern it there. Wherever there is 
a sky above him, and a world around him, the poet is in his 
place; for here too is man's existence, with its infinite long- 
ings and small acquirings; its ever-thwarted, ever-renewed 
endeavors; its unspeakable aspirations, its fears and hopes 
that wander through Eternity ; and all the mystery of bright- 
ness and of gloom that it was ever made of, in any age or 
climate, since man first began to live. Is there not the fifth 
act of a Tragedy in every death-bed, though it were a 
peasant's, and a bed of heath? And are wooings and wed- 
dings obsolete, that there can be Comedy no longer ? Or are 
men suddenly grown wise, that Laughter must no longer 
shake his sides, but be cheated of his Farce ? Man's life and 
nature is, as it was, and as it will ever be. But the poet must 
have an eye to read these things, and a heart to understand 
them; or they come and pass away before him in vain. He 
is a vates, a seer ; a gift of vision has been given him. Has 
life no meanings for him, which another cannot equally 

1 This discussion of Realism as op- with Dickens, Thackeray, ^eorge Eliot, 
posed to Romanticism is very inter- not to mention others, a real effort to 
esting to the student of nineteenth-cen- get near the realities of life. The poets, 
tury literature. So far as the novelists however, hardly followed Carlyle's ad- 
were concerned, at least, though the vice, 
century began with Scott, there was 



40 ROBERT BURNS 

decipher ; then he is no poet, and Delphi itself will not make 
him one. 1 

In this respect, Burns, though not perhaps absolutely a 
great poet, better manifests his capability, better proves the 
truth of his genius, than if he had by his own strength kept 
the whole Minerva Press 2 going, to the end of his literary 
course. He shows himself at Leasi a poet of Nature's own 
making; and Nature, after all, is still the grain! agent in 
making poets. We often hear of this and the other external 
condition being requisite for the existence of a poet. Some- 
times it is a certain sort of training; lie must have studied 
certain things, studied for instance "the elder dramatists/' 
and so learned a poetic language: as if poetry lay in the 
tongue, not in the heart. At other times we are told he must 
be bred in a certain rank, and must be on a confidential foot- 
ing with the higher classes; because, above all things, he must 
see the world. As to seeing the world, we apprehend this will 
cause him little difficulty, if he have but eyesight to see it 
with. Without eyesight, indeed, the task might be hard. The 
blind or the purblind man "travels from Dan to Beersheba 
and finds it all barren." But happily every poet is born in 
the world ; and sees it, with or against his will, every day and 
every hour he lives. The mysterious workmanship of man's 
heart, the true light and the inscrutable darkness of man's 
destiny, reveal themselves not only in capital cities and 
crowded saloons, but in every hut and hamlet where men 
have their abode. Nay, do not the elements of all human 
virtues and all human vices ; the passions at once of a Borgia 
and of a Luther, 3 lie written, in stronger or Painter lines, in 

1 This theory of poetry should be care- century noted for its sentimental novels, 

fully considered. It is founded on the » Two men who felt strongly; one with 

idea that the true mark of the poet is vicious passion, one with noble truth, 

to perceive and express Truth. Others Borgia was the name of an Italian fani- 

have thought the function of the poet Uy of the fifteenth century, of which 

was to perceive and express Beauty. Pope Alexander aud his children, Ca>sar 

On Carlyle's theory, which was the :nul Taicretia have an unfortunate fame 

greater poet, himself or Tennyson? for evil. 

8 a printing-house of the eighteenth 



ROBERT BURNS 41 

the consciousness of every individual bosom, that has practiced 
honest self-examination? Truly, this same world may be 
seen in Mossgiel 1 and Tarbolton, 2 if we look well, as clearly 
as it ever came to light in Crockford's, 3 or the Tuileries 
itself. 4 

But sometimes still harder requisitions are laid on the poor 
aspirant to poetry; for it is hinted that he should have been 
bom two centuries ago; inasmuch as poetry, about that date, 
vanished from the earth, and became no longer attainable by 
men ! 5 Such cobweb speculations have, now and then, over- 
hung the field of literature ; but they obstruct not the growtli 
of any plant there: the Shakespeare or the Burns, uncon- 
sciously and merely as he walks onward, silently brushes them 
away. Is not every genius an impossibility till he appear? 
Why do we call him new and original, if we saw where his 
marble was lying, and what fabric he could rear from it? 
It is not the material but the workman that is wanting. It is 
not the dark place that hinders, but the dim eye. A Scottish 
peasant's life was the meanest and rudest of all lives, till 
Burns became a poet in it, and a poet of it; found it a man's 
life, and therefore significant to men. A thousand battle- 
fields remain unsung; but the Wounded Hare* has not per- 
ished without its memorial ; a balm of mercy yet breathes on 
us from its dumb agonies, because a poet was there. Our 
Hallowe'en 7 had passed and repassed, in rude awe and laugh- 
ter, since the era of the Druids : but no Theocritus, 8 till 
Burns, discerned in it the materials of a Scottish Idyl : 

1 a farm where Burns wrote some of civilization advances, poetry almost 

his best poems. necessarily declines." 

1 a town in Ayrshire near Burns's ° a short poem addressed to a hare 

early home. that had been shot and left to die. 

3 a famous gambling club in London. 7 a poem in which Burns tells the 

* the palace and usual residence in different ways in which the lads and 
the eighteenth century of the Kings of lasses kept up the traditions of the sea- 
France, son. 

6 Macaulay in his essay on Milton has ■ a Greek poet of Sicily whose poems 

expressed this idea: "We think that, as of country life have charmed the world. 



42 ROBERT BURNS 

neither was the Holy Fair 1 any Council of Trent 2 or Eoman 
Jubilee, 3 but nevertheless, Superstition and Hypocrisy and 
Fun having been propitious to him, in this man's hand it 
became a poem, instinct with satire and genuine comic life. 
Let but the true poet be given us, we repeat it, place him 
where and how you will, and true poetry will not be wanting. 4 
Independently of the essential gift of poetic feeling, as we 
have now attempted to describe it, a certain rugged sterling 
worth pervades whatever Burns has written; a virtue, as of 
green fields and mountain breezes, dwells in his poetry; it is 
redolent of natural life and hardy natural men. There is a 
decisive strength in him, and yet a sweet native gracefulness : 
he is tender, he is vehement, yet without constraint or too 
visible effort ; he melts the heart, or inflames it, with a power 
which seems habitual and familiar to him. We see that in; 
this man there was the gentleness, the trembling pity of a ( 
woman, with the deep earnestness, the force and passionate 
ardor of a hero. Tears lie in him, and consuming fire; as. 
lightning lurks in the drops of the summer cloud. He has a 
resonance in his bosom for every note of human feeling ; the 
high and the low, the sad, the ludicrous, the joyful, are wel- 
come in their turns to his "lightly-moved and all-conceiving 
spirit." And observe with what a fierce prompt force he 
grasps his subject, be it what it may! How he fixes, as it 
were, the full image of the matter in his eye; full and clear 
in every lineament ; and catches the real type and essence of 
it, amid a thousand accidents and superficial circumstances, 
no one of which misleads him ! Is it of reason ; some truth 
to be discovered ? No sophistry, no vain surface-logic detains 
him; quick, resolute, unerring, he pierces through into the 

1 Burns represents himself as meeting s a celebration of the Roman Catholic 

with Fun, Superstition, and Hypocrisy. Church held every twenty-five years, 

and going with them to Mauchline Holy 4 Carlyle means that it is not neces- 

Fair, a sort of camp-meeting. sary that an affair should be great and 

* a general gathering of the Roman important in the eye of the world, to 

Catholic Church, 1545-1563. have something poetic to it. 



ROBERT BURNS 43 

marrow of the question and speaks his verdict with an 
emphasis that cannot be forgotten. Is it of description ; some 
visual object to be represented ? No poet of any age or nation 
is more graphic than Burns: the characteristic features dis- 
close themselves to him at a glance; three lines from his 
hand, and we have a likeness. And, in that rough dialect, in 
that rude, often awkward meter, so clear and definite a like- 
ness ! It seems a draughtsman working with a burnt stick ; and 
yet the burin of a Ketzch 1 is not more expressive or exact. 
Of this last excellence, 2 the plainest and most comprehen- 
sive of all, being indeed the root and foundation of every 
sort of talent, poetical or intellectual, we could produce innu- 
merable instances from the writings of Burns. Take these 
glimpses of a snow-storm from his Winter Night (the italics 
are ours) : 

When biting Boreas, fell and doure, 
Sharp shivers thro' the leafless bow'r, 
And Phoebus gies a short-liv'd glow'r 

Far south the lift, 
Dim dark'ning thro' the flaky show'r 

Or whirling drift: 

'Ae night the storm the steeples rock'd, 
Poor labor sweet in sleep was lock'd, 
While burns, wi* snawy wreeths upchok'd, 

Wild-eddying swirl, 
Or thro' the mining outlet bock'd 

Down headlong hurl. 

Are there not "descriptive touches" here ? The describer saw 
this thing; the essential feature and true likeness of every 
circumstance in it; saw, and not with the eye only. "Poor 
labor locked in sweet sleep ;" the dead stillness of man, uncon- 
scious, vanquished, yet not unprotected, while such strife of 
the material elements rages, and seems to reign supreme in 

1 Maurice Retzsch, 1779-1S57, a Ger- so, perhaps, because he possessed it to 

man painter and etcher: it is chiefly as a great degree himself. He was not an 

this latter that Carlyle is thinking of abstract thinker, but almost always em- 

him. bodied his ideas in some concrete form. 

1 the power to see. Carlyle thought 



44 ROBERT BURNS 

loneliness : this is of the heart as well as of the eye ! — Look- 
also at his image of a thaw, and prophesied fall of the Auld 
Brig : 

When heavy, dark, continued, a'-day rains 

Wi' deepening deluges o'erflow the plains; 

When from the hills where springs the brawling Coil, 1 

Or stately Lugar's mossy fountains boil, 

Or where the Greenock winds his moorland course, 

Or haunted Garpal draws his feeble source, 

Arous'd by blust'ring winds and spotting thowes, 

In mony a torrent down his snaw-broo rowes ; 

While crashing ice, borne on the roaring spate, 

Sweeps dams and mills and brigs a' to the gate; 

And from Glenbuck down to the Rattonkey, 

Auld Ayr is just one lengthen'd tumbling sea; 

Then down ye'll hurl, Deil nor ye never rise! 

And dash the gumlie jaups up to the pouring skies. 

The last line is in itself a Poussin-picture 2 of that Deluge! 
The welkin has, as it were, bent down with its weight; the 
"gumlie jaups" and the "pouring skies" are mingled together; 
it is a world of rain and ruin. — In respect of mere clearness 
and minute fidelity, the Farmer s commendation of his Auld 
Mare, 3 in plow or in cart, may vie with Homer's Smithy of 
the Cyclops, or yoking of Priam's Chariot. Nor have we for- 
gotten stout Burn-the-wind and his brawny customers, 
inspired by Scotch Drink*: but it is needless to multiply 
examples. One other trait of a much finer sort we select 
from multitudes of such among his Songs. It gives, in a sin- 
gle line, to the saddest feeling the saddest environment and 
local habitation: 

1 Coil, Lugar, etc., streams in Ayr- long famous, were of a classic calmness 
shire; thowes, thaws; snawbroo, snow rather than of any such fierce turmoil 
water; rowes, rolls; spate, freshet; Glen- as Burns had in his mind's eye. 

buck, the source of the Ayr; Rattonkey^ 3 The poem called The Auld Farmer's 

a landing-place in Dumfries; gumlie New Year Morning Salutation to His 

jaups, muddy waves. Auld Mare Maggie. 

2 Perhaps Carlyle calls this a Poussin- 4 Scotch Drink is one of the poems of 
picture because Nicholas Poussin was in Burns, though not the one in which 
his mind the chief of landscape-painters. Burn-the-Wind is a character. 

But Poussin's landscapes which were 



ROBERT BURNS 45 

The pale Moon is setting beyond the white wave, 
And time is setting wi' me, O; 
Farewell, false friends! false lover, farewell! 
I'll nae mair trouble them nor thee, 0. 

' This clearness of sight we have called the foundation of all 
talent; for in fact, unless we see our object, how shall we 
know how to place or prize it, in our understanding, our 
imagination, our affections ? Yet it is not in itself, perhaps, 
a very high excellence; but capable of being united indif- 
ferently with the strongest, or with ordinary power. Homer 
surpasses all men in this quality: but strangely enough, at 
no great distance below him are Eichardson 1 and Defoe. 2 
It belongs, in truth, to what is called a lively mind; and 
gives no sure indication of the higher endowments that may 
exist along with it. In all the three cases we have mentioned, 
it is combined with great garrulity; their descriptions are 
detailed, ample and lovingly exact; Homer's fire bursts 
through, from' time to time, as if by accident; but Defoe 
and Eichardson have no fire. Burns, again, is not more dis- 
tinguished by the clearness than by the impetuous force of his 
conceptions. Of the strength, the piercing emphasis with 
which he thought, his emphasis of expression may give a 
humble but the readiest proof. Who ever uttered sharper 
sayings than his ; words more memorable, now by their burn- 
ing vehemence, now by their cool vigor and laconic pith? 
A single phrase depicts a whole subject, a whole scene. We 
hear of "a gentleman that derived his patent of nobility direct 
from Almighty God." Our Scottish forefathers in the battle- 
field struggled forward "red-wat-shod" ': in this one word, a 
full vision of horror and carnage, perhaps too frightfully 
accurate for Art! 

In fact, one of the leading features in the mind of Burns 

i Samuel Richardson, 1689-1761, an 2 Daniel Defoe, 1661-1731, the author 

English novelist, author of Pamela, not only of Robinson Crusoe, but of a 
Clarissa, Sir Charles Grandison. number of other novels and writings. 



46 ROBERT BURNS 

is this vigor of his strictly intellectual perceptions. A resolute 
force is ever visible in his judgments, and in his feelings and 
volitions. Professor Stewart 1 says of him, with some sur- 
prise: "All the faculties of Burns' s mind were, as far as I 
could judge, equally vigorous ; and his predilection for poetry 
was rather the result of his own enthusiastic and impassioned 
temper, than of a genius exclusively adapted to that species 
of composition. From his conversation I should have pro- 
nounced him to be fitted to excel in whatever walk of ambi- 
tion he had chosen to exert his abilities." But this, if we 
mistake not, is at all times the very essence of a truly poetical 
endowment. Poetry, except in such cases as that of Keats, 2 
where the whole consists in a weak-eyed maudlin sensibility, 
and a certain vague random tunefulness of nature, is no 
separate faculty, no organ which can be superadded to the 
rest, or disjoined from them; but rather the result of their 
general harmony and completion. The feelings, the gifts that 
exist in the Poet are those that exist, with more or less 
development, in every human soul: the imagination, which 
shudders at the Hell of Dante, 3 is the same faculty, weaker 
in degree, which called that picture into being. How does 
the Poet speak to men, with power, but by being still more a 
man than they? Shakespeare, it has been well observed, in 
the planning and completing of his tragedies, has shown an 
Understanding, were it nothing more, which might have gov- 
erned states, or indited a Novum Organum.* What Burns's 
force of understanding may have been, we have less means of 
judging : it had to dwell among the humblest objects ; never 
saw Philosophy; never rose, except by natural effort and for 

1 Dugald Stewart, 1753-1828, was but Keats felt that beauty was the 
Professor of Moral Philosophy at the poet's form of truth, and he was there- 
University of Edinburgh. fore interested in that. 

2 John Keats, 1795-1821. With the 3 The Inferno is the first part of 
view of poetry expressed in p. 30, Car- Dante's great poem. 

lyle was not very likely to understand * the great philosophical work of 

Keats. Carlyle felt that a vision of Bacon in which he presents his new 
truth was the great thing for the poet, method of studying nature. 



ROBERT BURNS 47 

short intervals, into the region of great ideas. Nevertheless, 
sufficient indication, if no proof sufficient, remains for us in 
his works: we discern the brawny movements of a gigantic 
though untutored strength; and can understand how, in con- 
versation, his quick, sure insight into men and things may, as 
much as aught else about him, have amazed the best thinkers 
of his time and country. 

But, unless we mistake, the intellectual gift of Burns is 
fine as well as strong. The more delicate relations of things 
could not well have escaped his eye, for they were intimately 
present to his heart. The logic of the senate and the forum is 
indispensable, but not all-sufficient ; nay, perhaps the highest 
Truth is that which will the most certainly elude it. For this 
logic works by words, and "the highest," it has been said, 
"cannot be expressed in words." We are not without tokens 
of an openness for this higher truth also, of a keen though 
uncultivated sense for it, having existed in Burns. Mr. 
Stewart, it will be remembered, "wonders," in the passage 
above quoted, that Burns had formed some distinct conception 
of the "doctrine of association." We rather think that far 
subtler things than the doctrine of association had from of 
old been familiar to him. Here for instance : 

"We know nothing," thus writes he, "or next to nothing, 
of the structure of our souls, so we cannot account for those 
seeming caprices in them, that one should be particularly 
pleased with this thing, or struck with that, which, on minds 
of a different cast, makes no extraordina impression. I 
have some favorite flowers in spring, am^ng which are the 
mountain-daisy, the harebell, the foxglove, the wild-briar rose, 
the budding birch, and the hoary hawthorn, that I view and 
hang over with particular delight. I never hear the loud 
solitary whistle of the curlew in a summer noon, or the wild 
mixing cadence of a troop of gray plover in an autumnal 
morning, without feeling an elevation of soul like the enthusi- 



48 ROBERT BURNS 

asm of devotion or poetry. Tell me, my dear friend, to what 
can this be owing? Are we a piece of machinery, which, like 
the iEolian harp, passive, takes the impression of the passing 
accident; or do these workings argue something within us 
above the trodden clod ? I own myself partial to such proofs 
of those awful and important realities: a God that made all 
things, man's immaterial and immortal nature, and a world 
of weal or woe beyond death and the grave." 

Force and fineness of understanding are often spoken of as 
something different from general force and fineness of nature, 
as something partly independent of them. The necessities of 
language so require it; but in truth these qualities are not 
distinct and independent: except in special cases, and from 
special causes, they ever go together. A man of strong under- 
standing is generally a man of strong character; neither is 
delicacy in the one kind often divided from delicacy in the 
other. No one, at all events, is ignorant that in the Poetry of 
Burns keenness of insight keeps pace with keenness of feel- 
ing; that his light is not more pervading than his warmth. 
He is a man of the most impassioned temper; with passions 
not strong only, but noble, and of the sort in which great 
virtues and great poems take their rise. It is reverence, it is 
love towards all Nature that inspires him, that opens his eyes 
to its beauty, and makes heart and voice eloquent in its praise. 
There is a true old saying, that "Love furthers knowledge" : 
but above all, it is the living essence of that knowledge which 
makes poets; the first principle of its existence, increase, 
activity. Of Burns's fervid affection, his generous all-embrac- 
ing Love, we have spoken already, as of the grand distinction 
of his nature, seen equally in word and deed, in his Life and 
in his Writings. It were easy to multiply examples. Not 
man only, but all that environs man in the material and moral 
universe, is lovely in his sight: "the hoary hawthorn," the 
"troop of gray plover," the "solitary curlew," all are dear to 



ROBERT BURNS 49 

him; all live in this Earth along with him, and to all he is 
knit as in mysterious brotherhood. How touching is it, for 
instance, that, amidst the gloom of personal misery, brooding 
over the wintry desolation without him and within him, he 
thinks of the "ourie cattle" and "silly sheep," and their suf- 
ferings in the pitiless storm! 

I thought me on the ourie cattle, 1 
Or silly sheep, wha bide this brattle 

0' wintry war, 
Or thro' the drift, deep-lairing, sprattle, 

Beneath a scar. 
Ilk happing bird, wee helpless thing, 
That in the merry months o' spring 
Delighted me to hear thee sing, 

What comes o' thee? 
Where wilt thou cow'r thy chittering wing, 

And close thy e'e? 

The tenant of the mean hut, with its "ragged roof and chinky 
wall," has a heart to pity even these ! This is worth several 
homilies on Mercy; for it is the voice of Mercy herself. 
Burns, indeed, lives in sympathy; his soul rushes forth into 
all realms of being; nothing that has existence can be indif- 
ferent to him. The very Devil he cannot hate with right 
orthodoxy : 

But fare you weel, auld Nickie-ben; 2 
O, wad ye tak a thought and men'! 
Ye aiblins might, — I dinna ken, — 

Still hae a stake; 
I'm wae to think upo' yon den, 

Even for your sake! 

"He is the father of curses and lies," said Dr. Slop ; "and is 
cursed and damned already." — "I am sorry for it," quoth my 
uncle Toby ! 3 — a Poet without Love were a physical and meta- 
physical impossibility. 

But has it not been said, in contradiction to this principle, 

1 Ourie, drooping; bide, endure; brat- Nick; wad, would; aiblins, perhaps; 
tie, beating; deep-lairing, sinking; sprat- dinna ken, do not know; I'm wae, 
tie, scramble: scar, broken rock; ilk, sorrowful. 

each; happing, hopping. 3 a kind-hearted character in Sterne's 

2 This is the last verse of Burns's Tristram Shandy. 
Address to the Deil. Nickie-ben, the Old 



50 ROBERT BURNS 

that "Indignation makes verses"? 1 It has been so said, and 
is true enough: but the contradiction is apparent, not real. 
The Indignation which makes verses is, properly speaking, 
an inverted Love; the love of some right, some worth, some 
goodness, belonging to ourselves or others, which has been 
injured, and which this tempestuous feeling issues forth to 
defend and avenge. No selfish fury of heart, existing there 
as a primary feeling, and without its opposite, ever produced 
much Poetry : otherwise, we suppose, the Tiger were the most 
musical of all our choristers. Johnson 2 said, he loved a good 
hater; by which he must have meant, not so much one that 
hated violently, as one that hated wisely ; hated baseness from 
love of nobleness. However, in spite of Johnson's paradox, 
tolerable enough for once in speech, but which need not have 
been so often adopted in print since then, we rather believe 
that good men deal sparingly in hatred, either wise or unwise r 
nay that a "good" hater is still a desideratum in this world. 
The Devil, at least, who passes for the chief and best of that 
class, is said to be nowise an amiable character. 

Of the verses which Indignation makes, Burns has also 
given us specimens : and among the best that were ever given. 
Who will forget his "Dweller in yon Dungeon dark"; a piece 
that might have been chanted by the Furies of ^Eschylus? 3 
The secrets of the infernal Pit are laid bare; a boundless 
baleful "darkness visible"; and streaks of hell-fire quivering 
madly in its black, haggard bosom ! 

Dweller in yon Dungeon dark, 
Hangman of Creation, mark! 
Who in widow's weeds appears, 

1 From Juvenal; Indignatio facit ver- its presentation of what it is that makes 
sus. a man. 

2 Samuel Johnson was a favorite with 3 The Furies were the Greek goddesses 
Carlyle for his resolute sincerity. Car- of vengeance for crime. They were so 
lyle's review of Croker's Boswell's Life of terribly presented in the Eumenides of 
Johnson is worth reading, not only for ^Eschylus that women fainted at the 
its account of Johnson himself, but for sight. 



ROBERT BURNS 51 

Laden with unhonored years, 
Noosing with care a bursting purse, 
Baited with many a deadly curse! 

Why should we speak of Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled 1 ; 
since all know of it, from the king to the meanest of his 
subjects? This dithyrambic was composed on horseback; in 
riding in the middle of tempests, over the wildest Galloway 
moor, in company with a Mr. Syme, who, observing the poet's 
looks, forbore to speak, — judiciously enough, for a man com- 
posing Bruce' s Address might be unsafe to trifle with. Doubt- 
less this stern hymn was singing itself, as he formed it, 
through the soul of Burns : but to the external ear, it should 
be sung with the throat of the whirlwind. So long as there 
is warm blood in the heart of Scotchman or man, it will move 
in fierce thrills under this war-ode; the best, we believe, 
that was ever written by any pen. 

Another wild, stormful Song, that dwells in our ear and 
mind with a strange tenacity, is Macpherson's Farewell. 2 Per- 
haps there is something in the tradition itself that co-operates. 
For was not this grim Celt, this shaggy Northland Cacus, 3 
that "lived a life of sturt and strife, and died by treach- 
erie," 4 — was not he, too, one of the Mmrods and Napoleons 
of the earth, in the arena of his own remote misty glens, for 
want of a clearer and wider one ? Nay, was there not a touch 
of grace given him? A fiber of love and softness, of poetry 
itself, must have lived in his savage heart: for he composed 
that air the night before his execution ; on the wings of that 
poor melody his better soul would soar away above oblivion, 
pain and all the ignominy and despair, which, like an ava- 
lanche, was hurling him to the abyss! Here, also, as at 
Thebes, and in Pelops' line, 5 was material Fate matched 

1 Robert Bruce's Address to His Army; « The subjects of Greek tragedy come 
commonly called Bannockburn. often from the fate of the royal house of 

2 Macpherson was a Highland free- Thebes, as in Oedipus the King, or from 
booter. that of the descendants of Pelops, as in 

8 a robber in the Classical Mythology. the Agamemnon. 
4 The lines are quoted from the poem. 



52 ROBERT BURNS 

against man's Free will ; matched in bitterest though obscure 
duel; and the ethereal soul sank not, even in its blindness, 
without a cry which has survived it. But who, except Burns, 
could have given words to such a soul; words that we never 
listen to without a strange half-barbarous, half-poetic fellow- 
feeling ? 

Sae rantingly, sae wantonly, 

Sae dauntingly gaed he; 
He play'd a spring, and danced it round, 

Below the gallows-tree. 1 

Under a lighter disguise, the same principle of Love, which 
we have recognized as the great characteristic of Burns, and 
of all true poets, occasionally manifests itself in the shape of 
Humor. Everywhere, indeed, in his sunny moods, a full 
buoyant flood of mirth rolls through the mind of Burns; he 
rises to the high, and stoops to the low, and is brother and 
playmate to all Nature. We speak not of his bold and often 
irresistible faculty of caricature; for this is Drollery rather 
than Humor: but a much tenderer sportfulness dwells in 
him; and comes forth here and there, in evanescent and 
beautiful touches ; as in his Address to the Mouse, or the Farm- 
er's Mare, or in his Elegy on poor Mailie, which last may be 
reckoned his happiest effort of this kind. In these pieces 
there are traits of a Humor as fine as that of Sterne; 2 yet 
altogether different, original, peculiar, the Humor of Burns. 

Of the tenderness, the playful pathos, and many other kin- 
dred qualities of Burns's Poetry, much more might be said; 
but now, with these poor outlines of a sketch, we must pre- 
pare to quit this part of our subject. To speak of his indi- 
vidual Writings, adequately and with any detail, would lead 
us far beyond our limits. As already hinted, we can look on 
but few of these pieces as, in strict critical language, deserv- 
ing the name of Poems: they are rhymed eloquence, rhymed 

1 the chorus to Macpher son's Fare- as one might say, of a form of humor, at 
we ll. times sentimental, at times whimsical. 

2 Lawrence Sterne was the inventor, 



ROBERT BURNS 53 

pathos, rhymed sense; yet seldom essentially melodious, 
aerial, poetical. Tam o' Shanter 1 itself, which enjoys so high 
a favor, does not appear to us at all decisively to come under 
this last category, It is not so much a poem, as a piece of 
sparkling rhetoric; the heart and body of the story still lies 
hard and dead. He has not gone back, much less carried us 
back, into that dark, earnest, wondering age, when the tradi- 
tion was believed, and when it took its rise; he does not 
attempt, by any new-modeling of his supernatural ware, to 
strike anew that deep mysterious chord of human nature, 
which once responded to such things; and which lives in us 
too, and win forever live, though silent now, or vibrating with 
far other notes, and to far different issues. Our German 
readers will understand us, when we say, that he is not the 
Tieck but the Musaus 2 of this tale. Externally it is all green 
and living; yet look closer, it is no firm growth, but only 
ivy on a rock. The piece does not properly cohere : the 
strange chasm which yawns in our incredulous imaginations 
between the Ayr public-house and the gate of Tophet, 3 is no- 
where bridged over, nay the idea of such a bridge is laughed 
at; and thus the Tragedy of the adventure becomes a mere 
drunken phantasmagoria, or many-colored spectrum painted 
on ale-vapors, and the Farce alone has any reality. We do 
not say that Burns should have made much more of this 
tradition ; we rather think that, for strictly poetical purposes, 
not much was to be made of it. Neither are we blind to the 
deep, varied, genial power displayed in what he has actually 
accomplished; but we find far more "Shakespearean" quali- 
ties, as these of Tarn o' Shanter have been fondly named, in 

1 The poem tells how Tam O'Shanter, travagance. 

riding home from market-day at Ayr, 2 Tieck, 1773-1853, a German writer 

saw a wonderful revel of devils and of the romantic school, famous for his 

witches and all sorts of powers of evil. fantastic tales; Musaus, < 1735-1787, 

Carlyle feels that the combination is un- another German romanticist of more 

real and fantastic. Tam and his com- grotesque humor, 

panions at Ayr are real people, while the 3 a figurative name for hell, 
witches and warlocks are a piece of ex- 



54 ROBERT BURNS 

many of his other pieces ; nay, we incline to believe that this 
latter might have been written, all but quite as well, by a 
man who, in place of genius, had only possessed talent. 

Perhaps we may venture to say, that the most strictly 
poetical of all his "poems" is one which does not appear in 
Currie's Edition ; but has been often printed before and since, 
under the humble title of The Jolly Beggars} The subject 
truly is among the lowest in Nature; but it only the more 
shows our Poet's gift in raising it into the domain of Art. 
To our minds, this piece seems thoroughly compacted ; melted 
together, refined ; and poured forth in one flood of true liquid 
harmony. It is light, airy, soft of movement; yet sharp and 
precise in its details ; every face is a portrait : that raucle car- 
lin, that wee Apollo, that Son of Mars, are Scottish, yet ideal ; 
the scene is at once a dream, and the very Eagcastle of 
"Poosie Nansie." Farther, it seems in a considerable degree 
complete, a real self-supporting Whole, which is the highest 
merit in a poem. The blanket of the Night is drawn asunder 
for a moment ; in full, ruddy, flaming light, these rough tat- 
terdemalions are seen in their boisterous revel ; for the strong 
pulse of Life vindicates its right to gladness even here ; and 
when the curtain closes, we prolong the action, without effort ; 
the next day as the last, our Caird and our Balladmonger are 
singing and soldiering; their "brats and callets" are hawk- 
ing, begging, cheating; and some other night, in new com- 
binations, they will wring from Fate another hour of wassail 
and good cheer. Apart from the universal sympathy with 
man which this again bespeaks in Burns, a genuine inspira- 
tion and no inconsiderable technical talent are manifested 
here. There is the fidelity, humor, warm life and accurate 
painting and grouping of some Teniers, 2 for whom hostlers 

1 This piece is called a cantata, be- sing a song. 
cause it is a musical recitation with 2 David Teniers, 1610-1694, was a 

songs interspersed. The scene is at the Dutch painter of low life, more esteemed 

ale-house of Poosie Nansie; the soldier, in the eighteenth century and thebegin- 

the old woman, and the others, each ning of the nineteenth than he is to-day. 



ROBERT BURNS 55 

and carousing peasants are not without significance. It 
would be strange, doubtless, to call this the best of Burns's 
writings : we mean to say only, that it seems to us the most 
perfect of its kind, as a piece of poetical composition, strictly 
so called. In the Beggars' Opera, 1 in the Beggars' Bush, 2 
as other critics have already remarked, there is nothing which, 
in real poetic vigor, equals this Cantata; nothing, as we 
think, which comes within many degrees of it. 

But by far the most finished, complete and truly inspired 
pieces of Burns are, without dispute, to be found among his 
Songs. It is here that, although through a small aperture, 
his light shines with least obstruction; in its highest beauty 
and pure sunny clearness. The reason may be, that Song is 
a brief simple species of composition; and requires nothing 
so much for its perfection as genuine poetic feeling, genuine 
music of heart. Yet the Song has its rules equally with the 
Tragedy; rules which in most cases are poorly fulfilled, in 
many cases are not so much as felt. We might write a long 
essay on the Songs of Burns ; which we reckon by far the best 
that Britain has yet produced: for indeed, since the era of 
Queen Elizabeth, we know not that, by any other hand, aught 
truly worth attention has been accomplished in this depart- 
ment. True, we have songs enough "by persons of quality" ; 
we have tawdry, hollow, wine-bred madrigals ; many a rhymed 
speech "in the flowing and watery vein of Osorius the Portu- 
gal Bishop/' 3 rich in sonorous words, and, for moral, dashed 
perhaps with some tint of a sentimental sensuality ; all which 
many persons cease not from endeavoring to sing ; though for 
most part, we fear, the music is but from the throat outwards, 
or at best from some region far enough short of the Soul; 

1 The Beggars' Opera was a famous its characteristics, but neither has much 
piece, representing the lower walks of of the real poetic vigor of which Car- 
life. It was by John Gay and acted in lyle speaks. 
1728. s No one need know more of Osorius 

1 The Beggars 7 Bush was a play by than is stated in the text; indeed it ia 

Fletcher, first acted in 1622. Each has hard to see why Carlyle alludes to him. 



56 ROBERT BURNS 

not in which, but in a certain inane Limbo of the Fancy, or 
even in some vaporous debatable-land on the outskirts of the 
Nervous System, most of such madrigals and rhymed speeches 
seem to have originated. 

With the Songs of Burns we must not name these things. 
Independently of the clear, manly, heartfelt sentiment that 
ever pervades his poetry, his Songs are honest in another 
point of view: in form, as well as in spirit. They do not 
affect to be set to music, but they actually and in themselves 
are music ; they have received their life, and fashioned them- 
selves together, in the medium of Harmony, as Venus rose 
from the bosom of the sea. The story, the feeling, is not 
detailed, but suggested; not said, or spouted, in rhetorical 
completeness and coherence; but sung, in fitful gushes, in 
glowing hints, in fantastic breaks, in warbling s not of the 
voice only, but of the whole mind. We consider this to be 
the essence of a song ; and that no songs since the little care- 
less catches, and as it were drops of song, which Shakespeare 
has here and there sprinkled over his Plays, fulfill this condi- 
tion in nearly the same degree as most of Burns's do. Such 
grace and truth of external movement, too, presupposes in 
general a corresponding force and truth of sentiment and 
inward meaning. The Songs of Burns are not more perfect 
in the former quality than in the latter. With what tender- 
ness he sings, yet with what vehemence and entireness ! There 
is a piercing wail in his sorrow, the purest rapture in his joy ; 
he burns with the sternest ire, or laughs with the loudest or 
sliest mirth ; and yet he is sweet and soft, "sweet as the smile 
when fond lovers meet, and soft as their parting tear." If 
we farther take into account the immense variety of his sub- 
jects; how, from the loud flowing revel in Willie Irew'd a 
Feck o Maut, to the still, rapt enthusiasm of sadness for 
Mary in Heaven; from the glad kind greeting of Auld Lang 
Syne, or the comic archness of Duncan Gray, to the fire-eyed 



ROBERT BURNS 57 

fury of Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled, he has found a tone 
and words for every mood of man's heart, — it will seem a 
small praise if we rank him as the first of all our Song- 
writers; for we know not where to find one worthy of being 
second to him. 

It is on his Songs, as we believe, that Burns's chief influ- 
ence as an author will ultimately be found to depend : nor, 
if our Fletcher's aphorism 1 is true, shall we account this a 
small influence. "Let me make the songs of a people," said 
he, "and you shall make its laws." Surely, if ever any Poet 
might have equaled himself with Legislators on this ground, 
it was Burns. His Songs are already part of the mother- 
tongue, not of Scotland only but of Britain, and of the mil- 
lions that in all ends of the earth speak a British language. 
In hut and hall, as the heart unfolds itself in many-colored 
joy and woe of existence, the name, the voice of that joy and 
that woe, is the name and voice which Burns has given them. 
Strictly speaking, perhaps no British man has so deeply 
affected the thoughts and feelings of so many men, as this 
solitary and altogether private individual, which means ap- 
parently the humblest. 

In another point of view, moreover, we incline to think that 
Burns's influence may have been considerable: we mean, as 
exerted specially on the Literature of his country, at least on 
the Literature of Scotland. Among the great changes which 
British, particularly Scottish literature, has undergone since 
'that period, one of the greatest will be found to consist in its 
remarkable increase of nationality. Even the English writers, 
most popular in Burns's time, were little distinguished for 
their literary patriotism, in this its best sense. A certain 
attenuated cosmopolitanism had, in good measure, taken place 
of the old insular home-feeling; literature was, as it were, 
without any local environment; was not nourished by the 

1 The aphorism that follows is attributed to Andrew Fletcher, a Scotch 
orator of the seventeenth century. 



58 ROBERT BURNS 

affections which spring from a native soil. Our Grays and 
Glovers 1 seemed to write almost as if in vacuo; the thing 
written bears no mark of place ; it is not written so much for 
Englishmen, as for men; or rather, which is the inevitable 
result of this, for certain Generalizations which philosophy 
termed men. Goldsmith 2 is an exception: not so Johnson; 
the scene of his Rambler is little more English than that of 
his Rasselas. 3 

But if such was, in some degree, the case with England, it 
was, in the highest degree, the case with Scotland. In fact, 
our Scottish literature had, at that period, a very singular 
aspect; unexampled, so far as we know, except perhaps at 
Geneva, where the same state of matters appears still to con- 
tinue. For a long period after Scotland became British, 4 we 
had no literature : at the date when Addison and Steele were 
writing their Spectators, our good Thomas Boston 5 was writ- 
ing, with the noblest intent, but alike in defiance of grammar 
and philosophy, his Fourfold State of Man. Then came the 
schisms in our National Church, and the fiercer schisms in 
our Body Politic: Theologic ink, and Jacobite blood, with 
gall enough in both cases, seemed to have blotted out the 
intellect of the country: however, it was only obscured, not 
obliterated. Lord Karnes 6 made nearly the first attempt at 
writing English; and ere long, Hume, Bobertson, Smith, 7 

1 Thomas Gray, 1716-1771, is meant, Scotch divine, was the author of the 
the author of the Elegy Written in a wor k Carlyle mentions. 

Country Churchyard. Richard Glover, 6 Henry Home, Lord Kames, 1696- 

1712-1785, was more noteworthy in 1782 , wrote Elements of Criticism, a 

finance than in poetry. treatise which for a long time was a 

2 Oliver Goldsmith, 1728-1774, is a standard book for those who desired to 
little less of the classic school of which appreciate literature and the fine arts. 
Pope is the chief representative than 7 Adam Smith, 1723-1790, is less 
some others. widely known to-day than David Hume, 

3 See the essay of Macaulay, p. 121. 1711-1776, the philosopher, or William 

4 In 1707 Scotland and England were Robertson, 1721-1793, the historian. He 
united into one country, and the result is, however, a very noteworthy man, for 
was in literature, and in other ways, his Wealth of Nations is commonly re- 
that Scotland was for the time over- garded as the beginning of the modern 
shadowed. study of Political Economy. 

6 Thomas Boston, 1676-1732, a 



ROBERT BURNS 59 

and a whole host of followers, attracted hither the eyes of all 
Europe. And yet in this brilliant resuscitation of our "fervid 
genius/' there was nothing truly Scottish, nothing indige- 
nous; except, perhaps, the natural impetuosity of intellect, 
which we sometimes claim, and are sometimes upbraided with, 
as a characteristic of our nation. It is curious to remark that 
Scotland, so full of writers, had no Scottish culture, nor in- 
deed any English ; our culture was almost exclusively French. 
It was by studying Eacine and Voltaire, Batteux and Boileau, 1 
that Karnes had trained himself to be a critic and philoso- 
pher; it was the light of Montesquieu and Mably 2 that guided 
Eobertson in his political speculations; QuesnayV lamp that 
kindled the lamp of Adam Smith. Hume was too rich a man 
to borrow; and perhaps he reacted on the French more than 
he was acted on by them: but neither had he aught to do 
with Scotland; Edinburgh, equally with La Fleche, 4 was but 
the lodging and laboratory, in which he not so much morally 
lived, as metaphysically investigated. Never, perhaps, was 
there a class of writers so clear and well ordered, yet so totally 
destitute, to all appearance, of any patriotic affection, nay of 
any human affection whatever. The French wits of the period 
were as unpatriotic: but their general deficiency in moral 
principles, not to say their avowed sensuality and unbelief in 
all virtue, strictly so called, render this accountable enough. 
We hope, there is a patriotism founded on something better 
than prejudice ; that our country may be dear to us, without 
injury to our philosophy; that in loving and justly prizing 
all other lands, we may prize justly, and yet love before all 
others, our own stern Motherland, and the venerable Struc- 
ture of social and moral Life, which Mind has through long 

1 Racine and Voltaire were the great French publicist, though of lesser note, 
poets, Boileau and Batteux the chief 3 Quesnay was a French writer on 
critics of French classicism. matters of commerce and industry. 

2 Montesquieu, a famous French writ- 4 La Fleche was a town on the Loire 
er on public affairs; his chief work is where Hume lived while writing his 
The Spirit of Laws. Mably was a also earlier works. 



60 ROBERT BURNS 

ages been building up for us there. Surely there is nourish- 
ment for the better part of man's heart in all this: surely the 
roots, that have fixed themselves in the very core of man's 
being, may be so cultivated as to grow up not into briers, but 
into roses, in the field of his life ! Our Scottish sages have 
no such propensities : the field of their life shows neither 
briers nor roses: but only a fiat, continuous thrashing-floor 
for Logic, whereon all questions, from the "Doctrine of Rent" 
to the "Natural History of Religion," are thrashed and sifted 
with the same mechanical impartiality! 

With Sir Walter Scott at the head of our literature, 1 it 
cannot be denied that much of this evil is past, or rapidly 
passing away: our chief literary men, whatever other faults 
they may have, no longer live among us like a French Colony, 
or some knot of Propaganda Missionaries: but like natural- 
born subjects of the soil, partaking and sympathizing in all 
our attachments, humors and habits. Our literature no longer 
grows in water but in mold, and with the true racy virtues 
of the soil and climate. How much of this change may be due 
to Burns, or to any other individual, it might be difficult to 
estimate. Direct literary imitation of Burns was not to be 
looked for. But his example, in the fearless adoption of 
domestic subjects, could not but operate from afar: and cer- 
tainly in no heart did the love of country over burn with a 
warmer glow than in that of Burns: "a tide of Scottish 
prejudice," as he modestly calls this deep and generous feel- 
ing, "had been poured along his veins: and he felt that it 
would boil there till the flood-gates shut in eternal rest." It 
seemed to him, as if he could do so little for his country, and 
yet would so gladly have done all. One small province stood 
open for him, — that o( Scottish Song: and how eagerly he 
entered on it, how devotedly he labored there! In his toil- 
some journeyings, this object never quits him: it is the little 

I Walter Scott became the chief liter- and confirmed his position by the Wav- 
ary figure in Scotland by his poetry. crhij NoveU, 



ROBERT BURNS 61 

happy-valley of his careworn heart. In the gloom of his own 
affliction, he eagerly searches after some lonely brother of the 
muse, and rejoices to snatch one other name from the oblivion 
that was covering it! These were early feelings, and they 
abode with him to the end : 

... A wish (I mind its power), 
A wish, that to my latest hour 

Will strongly heave my breast, — 
That I, for poor auld Scotland's sake, 
Some useful plan or book could make, 

Or sing a sang at least. 

The rough bur Thistle spreading wide 

Amang the bearded bear, 
I turn'd my weeding-clips aside, 

And spared the symbol dear. 

But to leave the mere literary character of Burns, which 
has already detained us too long. Far more interesting than 
any of his written works, as it appears to us, are his acted 
ones: the Life he willed and was fated to lead among his 
fellow-men. These Poems are but like little rhymed frag- 
ments scattered here and there in the grand unrhymed Ro- 
mance of his earthly existence; and it is only when inter- 
calated in this at their proper places, that they attain their 
full measure of significance. 1 And this, too, alas, was but a 
fragment! The plan of a mighty edifice had been sketched; 
some columns, porticos, firm masses of building, stand com- 
pleted; the rest more or less clearly indicated; with many a 
far-stretching tendency, which only studious and friendly 
eyes can now trace towards the purposed termination. For 
the work is broken off in the middle, almost in the beginning ; 
and rises among us, beautiful and sad, at once unfinished 
and a ruin! If charitable judgment was necessary in esti- 
mating his Poems, and justice required that the aim and the 
manifest power to fulfill it must often be accepted for the 

' Only bv knowing the relation of his poems to his life (is Carlyle's opinion) 
can one fully appreciate them. 



62 ROBERT BURNS 

fulfillment ; much more is this the case in regard to his Life, 
the sum and result of all his endeavors, where his difficulties 
came upon him not in detail only, but in mass ; and so much 
has been left unaccomplished, nay was mistaken, and alto- 
gether marred. 

Properly speaking, there is but one era in the life of Burns, 
'and that the earliest. We have not youth and manhood, but 
only youth : for, to the end, we discern no decisive change in 
the complexion of his character; in his thirty-seventh year, 1 
he is still, as it were, in youth. With all that resoluteness of 
judgment, that penetrating insight, and singular maturity of 
intellectual power, exhibited in his writings, he never attains 
to any clearness regarding himself; to the last, he never 
ascertains his peculiar aim, even with such distinctness as is 
common among ordinary men; and therefore never can pur- 
sue it with that singleness of will, which insures success and 
some contentment to such men. To the last, he wavers be- 
tween two purposes: glorying in his talent, like a true poet, 
he yet cannot consent to make this his chief and sole glory, 
and to follow it as the one thing needful, through poverty or 
riches, through good or evil report. Another far meaner 
ambition still cleaves to him; he must dream and struggle 
about a certain "Rock of Independence"; 2 which, natural 
and even admirable as it might be, was still but a warring with 
the world, on the comparatively insignificant ground of his 
being more completely or less completely supplied with money 
than others; of his standing at a higher or at a lower alti- 
tude in general estimation than others. For the world still 
appears to him, as to the young, in borrowed colors: he 
expects from it what it cannot give to any man; seeks for 
contentment, not within himself, in action and wise effort, 
but from without, in the kindness of circumstances, in love, 
friendship, honor, pecuniary ease. He would be happy, not 

1 Burns died at tae age of thirty-seven. 2 He desired an established position in life. 



ROBERT BURNS 63 

actively and in himself, but passively and from some ideal 
cornucopia of Enjoyments, not earned by his own labor, but 
showered on him by the beneficence of Destiny. Thus, like a 
young man, he cannot gird himself up for any worthy well- 
calculated goal, but swerves to and fro, between passionate 
hope and remorseful disappointment: rushing onwards with 
a deep tempestuous force, he surmounts or breaks asunder 
many a barrier; travels, nay advances far, but advancing only 
under certain guidance, is ever and anon turned from his 
path; and to the last cannot reach the only true happiness 
of a man, that of clear decided Activity in the sphere for 
which, by nature and circumstances, he has been fitted and 
appointed.^ 

We do not say these things in dispraise of Burns ; nay, per- 
haps, they but interest us the more in his favor. This bless- 
ing is not given soonest to the best; but rather, it is often 
the greatest minds that are latest in obtaining it; for where 
most is to be developed, most time may be required to develop 
it. A complex condition had been assigned him from with- 
out; as complex a condition from within: no "preestablished 
harmony" existed between the clay soil of Mossgiel 1 and the 
empyrean soul of Eobert Burns; it was not wonderful that 
the adjustment between them should have been long post- 
poned, and his arm long cumbered, and his sight confused, 
in so vast and discordant an economy as he had been ap- 
pointed steward over. Byron was, at his death, but a year 
younger than Burns; and through life, as it might have 
appeared, far more simply situated : yet in him too we can 
trace no such adjustment, no such moral manhood; but at 
best, and only a little before his end, the beginning of what 
seemed such. 

By much the most striking incident in Burns's Life is his 

1 Mossgiel was his farm; Carlyle means He had not a place in the world which 
that Burns's higher nature had little re- gave him a chance to do his best; so it 
lation to the daily affairs of farming. was with Byron. 



64 ROBERT BURNS 

journey to Edinburgh: but perhaps a still more important 
one is his residence at Irvine, 1 so early as in his twenty-third 
year. Hitherto his life had been poor and toilworn; but 
otherwise not ungenial, and, with all its distresses, by no 
means unhappy. In his parentage, deducting outward cir- 
cumstances, he had every reason to reckon himself fortunate. 
His father was a man of thoughtful, intense, earnest charac- 
ter, as the best of our peasants are: valuing knowledge, pos- 
sessing some, and, what is far better and rarer, openminded 
for more : a man with a keen insight and devout heart : rev- 
erent towards God, friendly therefore at once,, and fearless 
towards all that God has made: in one word, though but a 
hard-handed peasant, a complete and fully unfolded Man. 2 
Such a father is seldom found in any rank of society; and 
was worth descending far in society to seek. Unfortunately, 
he was very poor: had he been even a little richer, almost 
never so little, the whole might have issued far otherwise. 
Mighty events turn on a straw : the crossing of a brook 3 de- 
cides the conquest of the world. Had this William Burns's 
small seven acres of nursery-ground anywise prospered, the 
boy Eobert had been sent to school : had struggled forward, 
as so many weaker men do, to some university: come forth 
not as a rustic wonder, bur as a regular well-trained intel- 
lectual workman, and changed the whole course of British 
Literature. — for it lay in him to have done this! But the 
nursery did not prosper : poverty sank his whole family below 
the help of even our cheap school-system : Burns remained a 
hard-worked plowboy, and British literature took its own 
course. Nevertheless, even in this rugged scene there is much 

1 Burns went to Edinburgh shortly met with Ferguson's poems, an event 

after the publication of his first volume. which re-aroused his poetic powers, and 

and received an ovation as a great poet. gave him a firmer desire to be a Scotch 

Carlyle thinks that this event was really poet. 

of less importance than his residence at .rlyle may have been thinking of 

the town of Irvine, whither he went in his own father. 
17S1, with theidea of becoming a flax- 3 the Rubicon, 

dealer. It was at Irvine that he first 



ROBERT BURNS 65 

sh him. 1 ges 5 with his brother, and 

for his r and n: - tad would fain 

shield from want. Wis - not banished from their poor 

»: the solemn 
; heard there from ; ~:-like 

thei and 
children into I its, these are rears not g : only, bv 

_ itself 

'oser kn:: : every other; in their 
are there tog ar are 

such the deep beau their 

only por: s - 3 i - - 

_ 
him : ' - tone; nay to bind it under his 

.nt hum 
chart - given him ; and so the 1 

of evil ai gay, friendly irony, and in their 

sesi se s no joi f heart _ 

yearnings of ami s he grows up : dreamy 

ukr :".:-.: - - '.::::; : :.. 

Rxisleno - - ang, in many- i mdor and 

gloom: and the auroi lighi si is gilding 

n, ind the m . sic of song is on 
walks 

i in ;:;■" 
Behind his plow upon the mountain sa 

We ours 

Burns was s the g -:. '-:••.:' 

j being t I tnd rorld; 

more so even terwards appeared. But nv 

ts the pai rnal roo: ; _ a : rth into 

in : se diss those ' s i certain 



66 ROBERT BURNS 

philosophers have asserted to be a natural preparative for 
entering on active life; a kind of mud-bath, in which the 
youth is, as it were, necessitated to steep, and, we suppose, 
cleanse himself, before the real toga of Manhood can be laid 
on him. We shall not dispute much with this class of philoso- 
phers; we hope they are mistaken: for Sin and Remorse so 
easily beset us at all stages of life, and are always such indif- 
ferent company, that it seems hard we should, at any stage, 
be forced and fated not only to meet but to yield to them, 
and' even serve for a term in their leprous armada. We hope 
it is not so. Clear we are, at all events, it cannot be the 
training one receives in this Devil's-service, but only our 
determining to desert from it, that fits us for true manly 
Action. We become men, not after we have been dissipated, 
and disappointed in the chase of false pleasure ; but after we 
have ascertained, in any' way, what impassable barriers hem 
us in through this life; how mad it is to hope for content- 
ment to our infinite soul from the gifts of this extremely 
finite world ; that a man must be sufficient for himself ; and 
that for suffering and enduring there is no remedy but striv- 
ing and doing. Manhood begins when we have in any way 
made truce with Necessity; begins even when we have sur- 
rendered to Necessity, as the most part only do ; but begins 
joyfully and hopefully only when we have reconciled ourselves 
to Necessity; and thus, in reality, triumphed over it, and 
felt that in Necessity we are free. Surely, such lessons as this 
last, which, in one shape or other, is the grand lesson for 
every mortal man, are better learned from the lips of a devout 
mother, in the looks and actions of a devout father, while the 
heart is yet soft and pliant, than in collision with the sharp 
adamant of Fate, attracting us to shipwreck us, when the 
heart is grown hard, and may be broken before it will become 
contrite. Had Burns continued to learn this, as he was 
already learning it, in his father's cottage, he would have 



ROBERT BURNS 67 

learned it fully, which he never did; and been saved many 
a lasting aberration, many a bitter hour and year of remorse- 
ful sorrow. 

It seems to us another circumstance of fatal import in 
Burns's history, that at this time too he became involved in 
the religious quarrels of his district; that he was enlisted and 
feasted, as the fighting man of the New-Light Priesthood, in 
their highly unprofitable warfare. 1 At the tables of these 
free-minded clergy he learned much more than was needful 
for him. Such liberal ridicule of fanaticism awakened in his 
mind scruples about Religion itself; and a whole world of 
Doubts, which it required quite another set of conjurors than 
these men to exorcise. We do not say that such an intellect 
as his could have escaped similar doubts at some period of 
his history; or even that he could, at a later period, have 
come through them altogether victorious and unharmed : but 
it seems peculiarly unfortunate that this time, above all 
others, should have been fixed for the encounter. For now 
with principles assailed by evil example from without, by 
"passions raging like demons" from within, he had little need 
of skeptical misgivings to whisper treason in the heat of the 
battle, or to cut off his retreat if he were already defeated. 
He loses his feeling of innocence; his mind is at variance 
with itself; the old divinity no longer presides there; but 
wild Desires and wild Repentance alternately oppress him. 
Ere long, too, he has committed himself before the world ; 
his character for sobriety, dear to a Scottish peasant as few 
corrupted worldlings can even conceive, is destroyed in the 
eyes of men; and his only refuge consists in trying to disbe- 
lieve his guiltiness, and is but a refuge of lies. * The blackest 
desperation now gathers over him, broken only by red light- 

,i^LTX h[ T lf ' " P ° lemiCal t km With S ° much heat and indiscretion 

ountrv h . a 7? P ? t,Dg ^ thEt * raiS6d a hue and «* of h eresv 

country half mad, and I ambitious of against me, which has not ceased to this 
sruning . . . used to puzzle Calvin- hour." 



68 ROBERT BURNS 

nings of remorse. The whole fabric of his life is blasted 

asunder; for now not only his character, but his personal 

liberty, is to be lost; men and Fortune are leagued for his 

hurt; "hungry Ruin has him in the wind." He sees no 

escape but the saddest of all: exile from his loved country, 

to a country in every sense inhospitable and abhorrent to 

him. 1 While the "gloomy night is gathering fast," in mental 

storm and solitude, as well as in physical, he sings his wild 

farewell to Scotland: 

Farewell, my friends; farewell, my foes! 
My peace with these, my love with those: 
The bursting tears my heart declare; 
Adieu, my native banks of Ayr! 

Light breaks suddenly in on him in floods ; but still a false 
transitory light, and no real sunshine. He is invited to Edin- 
burgh; hastens thither with anticipating heart; is welcomed 
as in a triumph, and with universal blandishment and accla- 
mation; whatever is wisest, whatever is greatest or loveliest 
there, gathers round him, to gaze on his face, to show him 
honor, sympathy, affection. Burns's appearance among the 
sages and nobles of Edinburgh must be regarded as one of the 
most singular phenomena in modern Literature; almost like 
the appearance of some Napoleon among the crowned sover- 
eigns of modern Politics. For it is nowise as "a mockery 
king," set there by favor, transiently and for a purpose, that 
he will let himself be treated; still less is he a mad Rienzi, 
whose sudden elevation turns his too weak head: but he 
stands there on his own basis ; cool, unastonished, holding his 
equal rank from Nature herself; putting forth no claim 
which there is not strength in him, as well as about him, to 
vindicate. Mr. Lockhart has some forcible observations on 
this point: 

"It needs no effort of imagination," says he, "to conceive 

1 Burns was on the very eve of leaving Edinburgh, that led him to believe that 
Scotland for America when he received he should find recognition of his poetic 
a letter from Dr. Thomas Blacklock, of genius. 



ROBERT BURNS 69 

what the sensations of an isolated set of scholars (almost all 
either clergymen or professors) must have been in the pres- 
ence of this big-boned, black-browed, brawny stranger, with 
his great flashing eyes, who, having forced his way among 
them from the plow-tail at a single stride, manifested in the 
whole strain of his bearing and conversation a most thorough 
conviction, that in the society of the most eminent men of his 
nation he was exactly where he was entitled to be; hardly 
deigned to flatter them by exhibiting even an occasional 
symptom of being flattered by their notice; by turns calmly 
measured himself against the most cultivated understandings 
of his time in discussion; overpowered the bon-mots of the 
most celebrated convivialists by broad floods of merriment, 
impregnated with all the burning life of genius; astounded 
bosoms habitually enveloped in the thrice-piled folds of social 
reserve, by compelling them to tremble— nay, to tremble visi- 
bly—beneath the fearless touch of natural pathos; and all 
this without indicating the smallest willingness to be ranked 
among those professional ministers of excitement, who are 
content to be paid in money and smiles for doing what the 
spectators and auditors would be ashamed of doing in their 
own persons, even if they had the power of doing it; and 
last, and probably worst of all, who was known to be in the 
habit of enlivening societies which they would have scorned 
to approach, still more frequently than their own, with elo- 
quence no less magnificent; with wit, in all likelihood still 
more daring; often enough, as the superiors whom he fronted 
without alarm might have guessed from the beginning, and 
had ere long no occasion to guess, with wit pointed at them- 
selves." 

The farther we remove from this scene, the more singular 
will it seem to us: details of the exterior aspect of it are 
already full of interest. Most readers recollect Mr. Walker's 
personal interviews with Burns as among the best passages of 



70 ROBERT BURNS 

his Narrative: a time will come when this reminiscence of 
Sir Walter Scott's, slight though it is, will also be precious : 
"As for Burns," writes Sir Walter, "I may truly say, Vir- 
gilium vidi tantum. I was a lad of fifteen in 1786-7, when 
he came first to Edinburgh, but had sense and feeling enough 
to be much interested in his poetry, and would have given the 
world to know him: but I had very little acquaintance with 
any literary people, and still less with the gentry of the west 
country, the two sets that he most frequented. Mr. Thomas 
Grierson was at that time a clerk of my father's. He knew 
Burns, and promised to ask him to his lodgings to dinner; 
but had no opportunity to keep his word; otherwise I might 
have seen more of this distinguished man. As it was, I saw 
him one day at the late venerable Professor Ferguson's, where 
there were several gentlemen of literary reputation, among 
whom I remember the celebrated Mr. Dugald Stewart. Of 
course, we youngsters sat silent, looked and listened. The 
only thing I remember which was remarkable in Burns's man- 
ner, was the effect produced upon him by a print of Bun- 
bury's, representing a soldier lying dead on the snow, his 
dog sitting in misery on one side, — on the other, his widow, 
with a child in her arms. These lines were written beneath : 

'"Cold on Canadian hills, or Minden's plain, 
Perhaps that mother wept her soldier slain ; 
Bent o'er her babe, her eye dissolved in dew, 
The big drops mingling with the milk he drew, 
Gave the sad presage of his future years, 
The child of misery baptized in tears.' 

"Burns seemed much affected by the print, or rather by the 

ideas which it suggested to his mind. He actually shed tears. 

He asked whose the lines were; and it chanced that nobody 

but myself remembered that they occur in a half-forgotten 

poem of Langhorne's 1 called by the unpromising title of 

"The Justice of Peace." I whispered my information to a 

friend present; he mentioned it to Burns, who rewarded me 

1 John Langhorne, 1735-1779, was a minor English poet. 



ROBERT BURNS 71 

with a look and a word, which, though of mere civility, I 
then received and still recollect with very great pleasure. 

"His person was strong and robust; his manners rustic, 
not clownish; a sort of dignified plainness and simplicity, 
which received part of its effect perhaps from one's knowledge 
of his extraordinary talents. His features are represented in 
Mr. Nasmyth's picture: but to me it conveys the idea that 
they are diminished, as if seen in perspective. I think his 
countenance was more massive than it looks in any of the 
portraits. I should have taken the poet, had I not known 
what he was, for a very sagacious country farmer of the old 
Scotch school, i, e., none of your modern agriculturists who 
keep laborers for their drudgery, but the douce gudeman 1 who 
held his own plow. There was a strong expression of sense 
and shrewdness in all his lineaments ; the eye alone, I think, 
indicated the poetical character and temperament. It was 
large, and of a dark cast, which glowed (I say literally 
glowed) when he spoke with feeling or interest. I never saw 
such another eye in a human head, though I have seen the 
most distinguished men of my time. His conversation 
expressed perfect self-confidence, without the slightest pre- 
sumption. Among the men who were the most learned of 
their time and country, he expressed himself with perfect 
firmness, but without the least intrusive forwardness; and 
when he differed in opinion, he did not hesitate to express it 
firmly, yet at the same time with modesty. I do not remem- 
ber any part of his conversation distinctly enough to be 
quoted; nor did I ever see him again, except in the street, 
where he did not recognize me, as I could not expect he 
should. He was much caressed in Edinburgh : but (consider- 
ing what literary emoluments have been since his day) the 
efforts made for his relief were extremely trifling. 

"I remember, on this occasion I mention, I thought Burns's 

1 the worthy man of the house. 



72 ROBERT BURNS 

acquaintance with English poetry was rather limited; and 
also that, having twenty times the abilities of Allan Eamsay 
and of Ferguson, he talked of them with too mnch humility 
as his models: there was doubtless national predilection in 
his estimate. 

"This is all I can tell you about Burns. I have only to 
add, that his dress corresponded with his manner. He was 
like a farmer dressed in his best to dine with the laird. I do 
not speak in malam partem, when I say, I never saw a man 
in company with his superiors in station or information more 
perfectly free from either the reality or the affectation of 
embarrassment. I was told, but did not observe it, that his 
address to females was extremely deferential, and always with 
a turn either to the pathetic or humorous, which engaged their 
attention particularly. I have heard the late Duchess of Gor- 
don remark this. — I do not know anything I can add to these 
recollections of forty years since." 

The conduct of Burns under this dazzling blaze of favor, 
the calm, unaffected, manly manner in which he not only bore 
it, but estimated its value, has justly been regarded as the best 
proof that could be given of his real vigor and integrity of 
mind. A little natural vanity, some touches of hypocritical 
modesty, some glimmerings of affectation, at least some fear 
of being thought affected, we could have pardoned in almost 
any man ; but no such indication is to be traced here. In his 
unexampled situation the young peasant is not a moment 
perplexed; so many strange lights do not confuse him, do 
not lead him astray. Nevertheless, we cannot but perceive 
that this winter did him great and lasting injury. A some- 
what clear knowledge of men's affairs, scarcely of their 
characters, it did afford him; but a sharper feeling of For- 
tune's unequal arrangements in their social destiny it also 
left with him. He had seen the gay and gorgeous arena, in 
which the powerful are born to play their parts; nay had 



ROBERT BURNS 73 

himself stood in the midst of it; and he felt more bitterly 
than ever, that here he was but a looker-on, and had no part 
or lot in that splendid game. From this time a jealous, indig- 
nant fear of social degradation takes possession of him; and 
perverts, so far as aught could pervert, his private content- 
ment, and his feelings towards his richer fellows. It was 
clear to Burns that he had talent enough to make a fortune, 
or a hundred fortunes, could he but have rightly willed this; 
it was clear also that he willed something far different, and 
therefore could not make one. 1 Unhappy it was that he had 
not power to choose the one, and reject the other; but must 
halt forever between two opinions, two objects ; making ham- 
pered advancement towards either. But so is it with many 
men: we "long for the merchandise, yet would fain keep the 
price" ; and so stand chaffering with Fate, in vexatious alterca- 
tion, till the night come, and our fair is over ! 

The Edinburgh Learned of that period were in general 
more noted for clearness of head than for warmth of heart: 
with the exception of the good old Blacklock, whose help was 
too ineffectual, scarcely one among them seems to have looked 
at Burns with any true sympathy, or indeed much otherwise 
than as at a highly curious thing. By the great also he is 
treated in the customary fashion; entertained at their tables 
and dismissed: certain modica of pudding and praise are, 
from time to time, gladly exchanged for the fascination of his 
presence; which exchange once effected, the bargain is fin- 
ished, and each party goes his several way. At the end of 
this strange season, Burns gloomily sums up his gains and 
losses, and meditates on the chaotic future. In money he is 
somewhat richer, 2 in fame and the show of happiness, infin- 

1 If he had been willing to give his 2 A new edition of his poems had been 

mind to making his way in the world, published, by subscription, and it is 

he could have made it, but he could not thought that he made about $3,500 by 

care for that kind of thing while his this publication, 
mind was intent on poetry. 



74 ROBERT BURNS 

itely richer ; but in the substance of it, as poor as ever. Nay- 
poorer; for his heart is now maddened still more with the 
fever of worldly Ambition; and through long years the dis- 
ease will rack him with unprofitable sufferings, and weaken 
his strength for all true and nobler aims. 

What Burns was next to do or to avoid; how a man so 
circumstanced was now to guide himself towards his true 
advantage, might at this point of time have been a question 
for the wisest. It was a question, too, which apparently he 
was left altogether to answer for himself: of his learned or 
rich patrons it had not struck any individual to turn a 
thought on this so trivial matter. Without claiming for 
Burns the praise of perfect sagacity, we must say, that his 
Excise and Farm scheme 1 does not seem to us a very unrea- 
sonable one; that we should be at a loss, even now, to sug- 
gest one decidedly better. Certain of his admirers have felt 
scandalized at his ever resolving to gauge; and would have 
had him lie at the pool, till the spirit of Patronage stirred the 
waters, 2 that so, with one friendly plunge, all his sorrows 
might be healed. Unwise counselors! They know not the 
manner of this spirit; and how, in the lap of most golden 
dreams, a man might have happiness, were it not that in the 
interim he must die of hunger! It reflects credit on the 
manliness and sound sense of Burns, that he felt so early on 
what ground he was standing ; and preferred self-help, on the 
humblest scale, to dependence and inaction, though with hope 
of far more splendid possibilities. But even these possibilities 
were not rejected in his scheme: he might expect, if it 
chanced that he had any friend, to rise, in no long period, 
into something even like opulence and leisure; while again, 
if it chanced that he had no friend, he could still live in 
security ; and for the rest, he "did not intend to borrow honor 

1 He leased a farm, and hoped by an 2 i. e., until some rich man should take 

appointment in the revenue service to him up, or till he could get a pension as 
make both ends meet. did Johnson. 



ROBERT BURNS 75 

from any profession. " We reckon that his plan was honest 
and well-calculated : all turned on the execution of it. Doubt- 
less it failed; yet not, we believe, from any vice inherent in 
itself. Nay, after all, it was no failure of external means, 
but of internal, that overtook Burns. His was no bankruptcy 
of the purse, but of the soul 1 ; to his last day, he owed no 
man anything. 

Meanwhile he begins well : with two good and wise actions. 
His donation to his mother, munificent from a man whose 
income had lately been seven pounds a year, was worthy of 
him, and not more than worthy. Generous also, and worthy 
of him, was the treatment of the woman whose life's welfare 
now depended on his pleasure. 2 A friendly observer might 
have hoped serene days for him : his mind is on the true road 
to peace with itself: what clearness he still wants will be 
given as he proceeds ; for the best teacher of duties, that still 
lie dim to us, is the Practice of those we see and have at hand. 
Had the "patrons of genius/' who could give him nothing, but 
taken nothing from him, at least nothing more ! The wounds 
of his heart would have healed, vulgar ambition would have 
died away. Toil and Frugality would have been welcome, 
since Virtue dwelt with them; and Poetry would have shone 
through them as of old : and in her clear ethereal light, which 
was his own by birthright, he might have looked down on his 
earthly destiny, and all its obstructions, not with patience 
only, but with love. 

But the patrons of genius would not have it so. Picturesque 
tourists, all manner of fashionable danglers after literature, 
and, far worse, all manner of convivial Mascenases, 3 hovered 
round him in his retreat; and his good as well as his weak 
qualities secured them influence over him. He was flattered 

1 It was the failure of his own charac- letters of the time of Augustus. Car- 
ter in principle that led to his downfall. lyle means by the term, minor people 

1 Jean Armour, whom he had secretly who liked to have Burns to supper and 

married. so on. 

3 Maecenas was a liberal patron of 



76 ROBERT BURNS 

by their notice ; and his warm social nature made it impossi- 
ble for him to shake them off, and hold on his way apart from 
them. These men, as we believe, were proximately the means 
of his ruin. Not that they meant him any ill; they only 
meant themselves a little good; if he suffered harm, let him 
look to it! But they wasted his precious time and his pre- 
cious talent; they disturbed his composure, broke down his 
returning habits of temperance and assiduous contented exer- 
tion. Their pampering was baneful to him; their cruelty, 
which soon followed, was equally baneful. The old grudge 
against Fortune's inequality awoke with new bitterness in 
their neighborhood; and Burns had no retreat but to "the 
Rock of Independence," which is but an air-castle after all, 
that looks well at a distance, but will screen no one from real 
wind and wet. Flushed with irregular excitement, exasper- 
ated alternately by contempt of others, and contempt of him- 
self, Burns was no longer regaining his peace of mind, but 
fast losing it forever. There was a hollowness at the heart of 
his life, for his conscience did not now approve what he wag 
doing. 

Amid the vapors of unwise enjoyment, of bootless remorse, 
and angry discontent with Fate, his true loadstar, a life of 
Poetry with Poverty, nay with Famine if it must be so, was 
too often altogether hidden from his eyes. And yet he sailed 
a sea, where without some such loadstar there was no right 
steering. Meteors of French Politics rise before him, but 
these were not his stars. An accident this, which hastened, 
but did not originate, his worst distresses. In the mad con- 
tentions of that time, he comes in collision with certain official 
Superiors ; is wounded by them ; cruelly lacerated, we should 
say, could a dead mechanical implement, in any case, be called 
cruel: and shrinks, in indignant pain, into deeper self-seclu- 
sion, into gloomier moodiness than ever. His life has now 
lost its unity: it is a life of fragments; led with little aim, 



ROBERT BURNS 77 

beyond the melancholy one of securing its own continuance, — 
in fits of wild false joy when such offered, and of black 
despondency when they passed away. His character before 
the world begins to surfer : calumny is busy with him ; for a 
miserable man makes more enemies than friends. Some faults 
he has fallen into, and a thousand misfortunes; but deep 
criminality is what he stands accused of, and they that are 
not without sin cast the first stone at him ! For is he not a 
well-wisher to the French Revolution, a Jacobin, 1 and there- 
fore in that one act guilty of all ? These accusations, political 
and moral, it has since appeared, were false enough: but the 
world hesitated little to credit them. Nay his convivial Maece- 
nases themselves were not the last to do it. There is reason 
to believe that, in his later years, the Dumfries aristocracy 
had partly withdrawn themselves from Burns, as from a 
tainted person, no longer worthy of their acquaintance. That 
painful class, stationed, in all provincial cities, behind the 
outmost breastwork of Gentility, there to stand siege and do 
battle against the intrusions of Grocerdom and Grazierdom, 
had actually seen dishonor in the society of Burns, and 
branded him with their veto; had, as we vulgarly say, cut 
him ! We find one passage in this Work of Mr. Lockhart's, 
which will not out of our thoughts: 

"A gentleman of that county, whose name I have already 
more than once had occasion to refer to, has often told me 
that he was seldom more grieved, than when riding into 
Dumfries one fine summer evening about this time to attend 
a county ball, he saw Burns walking alone, on the shady side 
of the principal street of the town, while the opposite side 
was gay with successive groups of gentlemen and ladies, all 
drawn together for the festivities of the night, not one of 
whom appeared willing to recognize him. The horseman dis- 

1 The Jacobins were the most violent sympathized with them was in the mind 
among the French revolutionists; feeling of the other side equal to any crime, 
ran so high in those days that whoever 



78 ROBERT BURNS 

mounted and joined Burns, who on his proposing to cross the 
street said : 'Nay, nay, my young friend, that's all over now ;' 
and quoted, after a pause, some verses of Lady Grizzel Bail- 
lie's pathetic ballad: 

"'His bonnet stood ance fu' fair on his brow, 
His auld ane look'd better than mony ane's new; 
But now he lets 't wear ony way it will hing, 
And casts himsell dowie upon the corn-bing. 

0, were we young as we ance hae been, 

We sud hae been gallopping down on yon green, 

And linking it ower the lily-white lea! 

And were na my heart light, I wad die.' 

It was little in Burns's character to let his feelings on certain 
subjects escape in this fashion. He, immediately after recit- 
ing these verses, assumed the sprightliness of his most pleas- 
ing manner; and taking his young friend home with him, 
entertained him very agreeably till the hour of the ball 
arrived." 

Alas! when we think that Burns now sleeps "where bitter 
indignation can no longer lacerate his heart," 1 and that most 
of those fair dames and frizzled gentlemen already lie at his 
side, where the breastwork of gentility is quite thrown down, 
— who would not sigh over the thin delusions and foolish 
toys that divide heart from heart, and make man unmerciful 
to his brother! 

It was not now to be hoped that the genius of Burns would 
ever reach maturity, or accomplish aught worthy of itself. 
His spirit was jarred in its melody; not the soft breath of 
natural feeling, but the rude hand of Fate, was now sweeping 
over the strings. And yet what harmony was in him, what 
music even in his discords ! How the wild tones had a charm 
for the simplest and the wisest; and all men felt and knew 
that here also was one of the Gifted ! "If he entered an inn 
at midnight, after all the inmates were in bed, the news of 

1 the epitaph of Dean Swift. 



ROBERT BURNS 79 

his arrival circulated from the cellar to the garret; and ere 
ten minutes had elapsed, the landlord and all his guests were 
assembled !" Some brief pure moments of poetic life were 
yet appointed him, in the composition of his Songs. We can 
understand how he grasped at this employment ; and how too, 
he spurned all other reward for it but what the labor itself 
brought him. For the soul of Burns, though scathed and 
marred, was yet living in its full moral strength, though 
sharply conscious of its errors and abasement: and here, in 
his destitution and degradation, was one act of seeming noble- 
ness and self-devotedness left even for him to perform. He 
felt too,, that with all the "thoughtless follies" that had "laid 
him low," the world was unjust and cruel to him; and he 
silently appealed to another and calmer time. Not as a hired 
soldier, but as a patriot, would he strive for the glory of 
his country: so he cast from him the poor sixpence a-day, 
and served zealously as a volunteer. 1 Let us not grudge him 
this last luxury of his existence; let him not have appealed 
to us in vain! The money was not necessary to him; he 
struggled through without it : long since, these guineas would 
have been gone, and now the high-mindedness of refusing 
them will plead for him in all hearts forever. 

We are here arrived at the crisis of Burns's life; for mat- 
ters had now taken such a shape with him as could not long 
continue. If improvement was not to be looked for, Nature 
could only for a limited time maintain this dark and madden- 
ing warfare against the world and itself. We are not medi- 
cally informed whether any continuance of years was, at this 
period, possible for Burns; whether his death is to be looked 
on as in some sense an accidental event, or only as the natural 
consequence of the long series of events that had preceded. 
The latter seems to be the likelier opinion; and yet it is by 

1 At this time there was much war pence a day was the pay of an enlisted 
on the Continent and constant possibil- man. 
ity of invasion of England. The six- 



80 ROBERT BURNS 

no means a certain one. At all events, as we have said, some 
change could not be very distant. Three gates of deliverance, 
it seems to us, were open for Burns: clear poetical activity; 
madness; or death. The first, with longer life, was still pos- 
sible, though not probable; for physical causes were begin- 
ning to be concerned in it: and yet Burns had an iron reso- 
lution; could he but have seen and felt, that not only his 
highest glor}', but his first duty, and the true medicine for all 
his woes, lay here. The second was still less probable; for 
his mind was ever among the clearest and firmest. So the 
milder third gate was opened for him: and he passed, not 
softly yet speedily, into that still country, where the hail- 
storms and fire-showers do not reach, and the heaviest-laden 
wayfarer at length lays down his load! 

Contemplating this sad end of Burns, and how he sank 
unaided by any real help, uncheered by any wise sympathy, 
generous minds have sometimes figured to themselves, with 
a reproachful sorrow, that much might have been done for 
him; that by counsel, true affection and friendly ministra- 
tions, he might have been saved to himself and the world. 
We question whether there is not more tenderness of heart 
than soundness of judgment in these suggestions. It seems 
dubious to us whether the richest, wisest, most benevolent 
individual could have lent Burns any effectual help. Counsel, 
which seldom profits any one, he did not need ; in his under- 
standing, he knew the right from the wrong, as well perhaps 
as any man ever did ; but the persuasion, which would have 
availed him, lies not so much in the head as in the heart, 
where no argument or expostulation could have assisted much 
to implant it. As to money again, we do not believe that this 
was his essential want; or well see how any private man 
could, even presupposing Burns's consent, have bestowed on 
him an independent fortune, with much prospect of decisive 



ROBERT BURNS 81 

advantage. It is a mortifying truth, that two men in any- 
rank of society, could hardly be found virtuous enough to 
give money, and to take it as a necessary gift, without injury 
to the moral entireness of one or both. But so stands the 
fact: Friendship, in the old heroic sense of that term, no 
longer exists; except in the cases of kindred or other legal 
affinity, it is in reality no longer expected, or recognized as a 
virtue among men. A close observer of manners has pro- 
nounced "Patronage," that is, pecuniary or other economic 
furtherance, to be "twice cursed"; cursing him that gives, 
and him that takes ! And thus, in regard to outward matters 
also, it has become the rule, that no one shall look for effectual 
help to another ; but that each shall rest contented with what 
help he can afford himself. Such, we say, is the principle of 
modern Honor; naturally enough growing out of that senti- 
ment of Pride, which we inculcate and encourage as the basis 
of our whole social morality. Many a poet has been poorer 
than Burns ; but no one was ever prouder : we may question 
whether, without great precautions, even a pension from 
Eoyalty would not have galled and encumbered, more than 
actually assisted him. 

Still less, therefore, are we disposed to join with another 
class of Burns's admirers, who accuse the higher ranks among 
us of having ruined Burns by their selfish neglect of him. 
We have already stated our doubts whether direct pecuniary 
help, had it been offered, would have been accepted, or could 
have proved very effectual. We shall readily admit, however, 
that much was to be done for Burns ; that many a poisoned 
arrow might have been warded from his bosom; many an 
entanglement in his path cut asunder by the hand of the 
powerful ; and light and heat, shed on him from high places, 
would have made his humble atmosphere more genial; and 
the softest heart then breathing might have lived and died 
with some fewer pangs. Nay, we shall grant farther, and for 



82 ROBERT BURNS 

Burns it is granting much, that, with all his pride, he would 
have thanked, even with exaggerated gratitude, any one who 
had cordially befriended him : patronage, unless once cursed, 
needed not to have been twice so. At all events, the poor 
promotion he desired in his calling might have been granted : 
it was his own scheme, therefore likelier than any other to be 
of service. All this it might have been a luxury, nay it was 
a duty, for our nobility to have done. No part of all this, 
however, did any of them do ; or apparently attempt, or wish 
to do: so much is granted against them. But what then is 
the amount of their blame? Simply that they were men of 
the world, and walked by the principles of such men; that 
they treated Burns, as other nobles and other commoners had 
done other poets; as the English did Shakespeare; as King 
Charles and his Cavaliers did Butler, as King Philip and his 
Grandees did Cervantes. 1 Do men gather grapes of thorns; 
or shall we cut down our thorns for yielding only a fence and 
haws? How, indeed, could the "nobility and gentry of his 
native land" hold out any help to this "Scottish Bard, proud 
of his name and country" ? Were the nobility and gentry so 
much as able rightly to help themselves ? Had they not their 
game to preserve ; their borough interests to strengthen ; din- 
ners, therefore, of various kinds to eat and give ? Were their 
means more than adequate to all this business, or less than 
adequate? Less than adequate, in general; few of them in 
reality were richer than Burns; many of them were poorer; 
for sometimes they had to wring their supplies, as with 
thumb-screws, from the hard hand; and, in their need of 
guineas, to forget their duty of mercy; which Burns was 
never reduced to do. Let us pity and forgive them. The 
game they preserved and shot, the dinners they ate and gave, 
the borough interests they strengthened, the little Babylons 
they severally builded by the glory of their might, are all 

1 Cervantes, 1549-1616, the famous author of Don Quixote, suffered various 
hardships and reverses in life. 



ROBERT BURNS 83 

melted or melting back into the primeval Chaos, as man's 
merely selfish endeavors are fated to do: and here was an 
action, extending, in virtue of its worldly influence, we may 
say, through all time; in virtue of its moral nature, beyond 
all time, being immortal as the Spirit of Goodness itself; 
this action was offered them to do, and light was not given 
them to do it. Let us pity and forgive them. But better than 
pity, let us go and do otherwise. Human suffering did not 
end with the life of Burns; neither was the solemn man- 
date, "Love one another, bear one another's burdens," given to 
the rich only, but to all men. True, we shall find no Burns 
to relieve, to assuage by our aid or our pity; but celestial 
natures, groaning under the fardels of a weary life, we shall 
still find; and that wretchedness which Fate has rendered 
voiceless and tuneless is not the least wretched, but the most. 
Still, we do not think that the blame of Burns's failure lies 
chiefly with the world. The world, it seems to us, treated him 
with more rather than with less kindness than it usually 
shows to such men. It has ever, we fear, shown but small 
favor to its Teachers 1 : hunger and nakedness, perils and re- 
vilings, the prison, the cross, the poison-chalice have, in most 
times and countries, been the market-price it has offered for 
Wisdom, the welcome with which it has greeted those who 
have come to enlighten and purify it. Homer and Socrates, 
and the Christian Apostles, belong to old days; but the 
world's Martyrology was not completed with these. Eoger 
Bacon 2 and Galileo 3 languish in priestly dungeons; Tasso 4 
pines in the cell of a mad-house ; Camoens 5 dies begging on 
the streets of Lisbon. So neglected, so "persecuted they the 
Prophets," not in Judea only, but in all places where men 

i Cf. Carlyle's view of the poet, p. 39. Italian epic poet; his chief work was 

2 Roger Bacon, 1214-1292, an English Jerusalem Delivered. 

scholar, one of the greatest of his time. 5 Camoens, 1524-1579, a Portuguese 

s a famous Italian scholar, especially poet, who celebrated the glory of his 

in astromony. He lived 1564-1642. country in the Lusiad. 

«Tornuato Tas^o, 1544-1595, an 



84 ROBERT BURNS 

have been. We reckon that every poet of Burns's order is, or 
should be, a prophet 1 and teacher to his age; that he has no 
right to expect great kindness from it, but rather is bound 
to do it great kindness ; that Burns, in particular, experienced 
fully the usual proportion of the world's goodness; and that 
the blame of his failure, as we have said, lies not chiefly with 
the world. 

Where, then, does it lie? We are forced to answer: With 
himself; it is his inward, not his outward misfortunes that 
bring him to the dust. Seldom, indeed, is it otherwise; sel- 
dom is a life morally wrecked but the grand cause lies in some 
internal mal-arrangement, some want less of good fortune 
than of good guidance. Nature fashions no creature without 
implanting in it the strength needful for its action and dura- 
tion; least of all does she so neglect her masterpiece and 
darling, the poetic soul. 2 Neither can we believe that it is in 
the power of any external circumstances utterly to ruin the 
mind of a man; nay, if proper wisdom be given him, even 
so much as to affect its essential health and beauty. The 
sternest sum-total of all worldly misfortunes is Death; 
nothing more can lie in the cup of human woe: yet many 
men, in all ages, have triumphed over Death, and led it cap- 
tive; converting its physical victory into a moral victory for 
themselves, into a seal and immortal consecration for all 
that their past life had achieved. What has been done, may 
be done again: nay, it is but the degree and not the kind 
of such heroism that differs in different seasons; for without 
some portion of this spirit, not of boisterous daring, but of 
silent fearlessness, of Self-denial in all its forms, no good 
man, in any scene or time, has ever attained to be good. 

We have already stated the error of Burns; and mourned 

1 a prophet, not in the sense that he besides his poetic genius, a genius for 
can foretell the future, but as one who practical affairs that made him well-to- 
declares the truth, the will of God. do in the world. 

2 Thus Nature gave to Shakespeare, 



ROBERT BURNS 85 

over it, rather than blamed it. It was the want of unity in 
his purposes, of consistency in his aims; the hapless attempt 
to mingle in friendly union the common spirit of the world 
with the spirit of poetry, which is of a far different and 
altogether irreconcilable nature. 1 Burns was nothing wholly, 
and Burns could be nothing, no man formed as he was can 
be anything, by halves. The heart, not of a mere hot-blooded, 
popular Versemonger, or poetical Restaurateur, 2 but of a true 
Poet and Singer, worthy of the old religious heroic times, 
had been given him: and he fell in an age, not of heroism 
and religion, but of skepticism, selfishness and triviality, when 
true Nobleness was little understood, and its place supplied 
by a hollow, dissocial, altogether barren and unfruitful prin- 
ciple of Pride. The influences of that age, his open, kind, 
susceptible nature, to say nothing of his highly untoward 
situation, made it more than usually difficult for him to cast 
aside, or rightly subordinate ; the better spirit that was within 
him ever sternly demanded its rights, its supremacy : he spent 
his life in endeavoring to reconcile these two ; and lost it, as 
he must lose it, without reconciling them. 

Burns was born poor; and born also to continue poor, for 
he would not endeavor to be otherwise : this it had been well 
could he have once for all admitted, and considered as finally 
settled. He was poor, truly; but hundreds even of his own 
class and order of minds have been poorer, yet have suffered 
nothing deadly from it : nay, his own Father had a far sorer 
battle with ungrateful destiny than his was; and he did not 
yield to it, but died courageously warring, and to all moral 
intents prevailing, against it. True, Burns had little means, 
had even little time for poetry, his only real pursuit and 
vocation; but so much the more precious was what little he 
had. In all these external respects his case was hard; but 

1 Burns was not able to keep his mind 2 one who keeps a restaurant, i. e. 

on his poetry to the exclusion of lesser one who serves out to people whatever 
things. they may choose to order. 



86 ROBERT BURNS 

very far from the hardest. Poverty, incessant drudgery and 
much worse evils, it has often been the lot of Poets and wise 
men to strive with, and their glory to conquer. Locke 1 was 
banished as a traitor; and wrote his Essay on the Human 
Understanding sheltering himself in a Dutch garret. Was 
Milton rich or at his ease when he composed Paradise Lost? 
Not only low, but fallen from a height; not only poor, but 
impoverished; in darkness and with dangers compassed 
round, he sang his immortal song, and found fit audience, 
though few. 2 Did not Cervantes finish his work, a maimed 
soldier and in prison? Nay, was not the Araucana, 3 which 
Spain acknowledges as its Epic, written without even the aid 
of paper; on scraps of leather, as the stout fighter and voy- 
ager snatched any moment from that wild warfare? 

And what, then, had these men, which Burns wanted? 
Two things ; both which, it seems to us, are indispensable for 
such men. They had a true, religious principle of morals; 
and a single, not a double aim in their activity. They were 
not self-seekers and self -worshipers ; but seekers and worship- 
ers of something far better than Self. Not personal enjoy- 
ment was their object; but a high, heroic ideal of Eeligion, 
of Patriotism, of heavenly Wisdom, in one or the other form, 
ever hovered before them ; in which cause they neither shrank 
from suffering, nor called on the earth to witness it as some- 
thing wonderful ; but patiently endured, counting it blessed- 
ness enough so to spend and be spent. Thus the "golden- 
calf of Self-love," however curiously carved, was not their 
Deity; but the Invisible Goodness, which alone is man's rea- 
sonable service. This feeling was as a celestial fountain, 

1 John Locke, 1632-1704, was the Carlyle come from Paradise Lost, VII, 
great figure in English thought at the 26-31. 

end of the century as Bacon was at the 3 The Araucana is a poem by Alonso 

beginning. de Ercilla, a Spanish poet of the sixteenth 

2 Milton wrote a great part of Paradise century, said (by him) to have been 
Lost at a time when he was blind and written under the circumstances men- 
wholly out of connection with the domi- tioned. 

nant royalists. The phrases used by 



ROBERT BURNS 87 

whose streams refreshed into gladness and beauty aJ the 
provinces of their otherwise too desolate existence. In a word, 
they willed one thing, to which all other things were sub- 
ordinated and made subservient; and therefore they accom- 
plished it. The wedge will rend rocks; but its edge must be 
sharp and single: if it be double, the wedge is bruised in 
pieces and will rend nothing. 

Part of this superiority these men owed to their age 1 ; in 
which heroism and devotedness were still practiced, or at least 
not yet disbelieved in : but much of it likewise they owed to 
themselves. With Burns, again, it was different. His moral- 
ity, in most of its practical points, is that of a mere worldly 
man ; enjoyment, in a finer or coarser shape, is the only thing 
he longs and strives for. A noble instinct sometimes raises 
him above this; but an instinct only, and acting only for 
moments. He has no Eeligion ; in the shallow age, where his 
days were cast, Eeligion was not discriminated from the New 
and Old Light forms of Eeligion; and was, with these, becom- 
ing obsolete in the minds of men. His heart, indeed, is alive 
with a trembling adoration, but there is no temple in his 
understanding. He lives in darkness and in the shadow of 
doubt. His religion, at best, is an anxious wish; like that 
of Eabelais, 2 "a great Perhaps." 

He loved Poetry warmly, and in his heart; could he but 
have loved it purely, and with his whole undivided heart, it 
had been well. For Poetry, as Burns could have followed it, 
is but another form of Wisdom, of Eeligion ; is itself Wisdom 
and Eeligion. But this also was denied him. His poetry is 
a stray vagrant gleam, which will not be extinguished within 
him, yet rises not to be the true light of his path, but is often 
a wildfire that misleads him. It was not necessary for Burns 

1 The sixteenth and seventeenth cen- great French humorist. The allusion 
turies were in Carlyle's view more sin- is to his last words, " I am going to the 
cere epochs than the eighteenth. great Perhaps." 

2 Frangois Rabelais, 1483-1553, is the 



88 ROBERT BURNS 

to be rich, to be, or to seem, "independent"; but it was 
necessary for him to be at one with his own heart ; to place 
what was highest in his nature highest also in his life; "to 
seek within himself for that consistency and sequence, which 
external events would forever refuse him." He was born a 
poet ; poetry was the celestial element of his being, and should 
have been the soul of his whole endeavors. Lifted into that 
serene ether, whither he had wings given him to mount, he 
would have needed no other elevation: poverty, neglect and 
all evil, save the desecration of himself and his Art, were a 
small matter to him ; the pride and the passions of the world 
lay far beneath his feet; and he looked down alike on noble 
and slave, on prince and beggar, and all that wore the stamp 
of man, with clear recognition, with brotherly affection, with 
sympathy, with pity. Nay, we question whether for his cul- 
ture as a Poet poverty and much suffering for a season were 
not absolutely advantageous. Great men, in looking back over 
their lives, have testified to that effect. "I would not for 
much," says Jean Paul, 1 "that I had been born richer." And 
yet Paul's birth was poor enough; for, in another place, he 
adds: "The prisoner's allowance is bread and water; and I 
had often only the latter." But the gold that is refined in 
the hottest furnace comes out the purest; or, as he lias him- 
self expressed it, "the canary-bird sings sweeter the longer it 
has been trained in a darkened cage." 

A man like Burns might have divided his hours between 
poetry and virtuous industry ; industry which all true feeling 
sanctions, nay prescribes, and which has a beauty, for that 
cause, beyond the pomp of thrones: but to divide his hours 
between poetry and rich men's banquets was an ill-starred 
and inauspicious attempt. How could he be at ease at such 
banquets ? What had he to do there, mingling his music with 

1 Jean Paul Richter, 1763-1S25, a German humorist, usually known by his 
first two names; a great favorite of Carlyle. 



ROBERT BURNS 89 

the coarse roar of altogether earthly voices; brightening the 
thick smoke of intoxication with fire lent him from heaven? 
Was it his aim to enjoy life ? To-morrow he must go drudge 
as an Exciseman ! We wonder not that Burns became moody, 
indignant, and at times an offender against certain rules of 
society; but rather that he did not grow utterly frantic, and 
run amuck against them all. How could a man, so falsely 
placed, by his own or others' fault, ever know contentment or 
peaceable diligence for an hour? What he did, under such 
perverse guidance, and what he forebore to do, alike fill us 
with astonishment at the natural strength and worth of his 
character. 

Doubtless there was a remedy for this perverseness 1 ; but 
not in others ; only in himself ; least of all in simple increase 
of wealth and worldly "respectability." We hope we have 
now heard enough about the efficacy of wealth for poetry, and 
to make poets happy. Nay, have we not seen another instance 
of it in these very days? Byron, a man of an endowment 
considerably less ethereal than that of Burns, is born in the 
rank not of a Scottish plowman, but of an English peer : the 
highest worldly honors, the fairest worldly career, are his by 
inheritance; the richest harvest of fame he soon reaps, in 
another province, 2 by his own hand. And what does all this 
avail him ? Is he happy, is he good, is he true ? Alas, he has 
a poet's soul, and strives towards the Infinite and the Eternal ; 
and soon feels that all this is but mounting to the house-top 
to reach the stars! Like Burns, he is only a proud man; 
might, like him, have "purchased a pocket-copy of Milton to 
study the character of Satan"; for Satan also is Byron's 
grand exemplar, the hero of his poetry, and the model appar- 
ently of his conduct. As in Burns's case too, the celestial 
element will not mingle with the clay of earth ; both poet and 

1 The real remedy for Burns was to of society, for the false fascinations of 
do right; to care nothing for recognition banquets and occasions, to do his work 
by others, for the conventional respect and write his poems. 2 that of poetry. 



90 ROBERT BURNS 

man of the world he must not be; vulgar Ambition will not 
live kindly with poetic Adoration; he cannot serve God and 
Mammon. Byron, like Burns, is not happy; nay he is the 
most wretched of all men. His life is falsely arranged 1 : the 
fire that is in him is not a strong, still, central fire, warming 
into beauty the products of a world; but it is the mad fire of 
a volcano ; and now — we look sadly into the ashes of a crater, 
which ere long will fill itself with snow ! 

Byron and Burns were sent forth as missionaries to their 
generation, to teach it a higher Doctrine, a purer Truth ; they 
had a message 2 to deliver, which left them no rest till it 
was accomplished; in dim throes of pain, this divine behest 
lay smouldering within them; for they knew not what it 
meant, and felt it only in mysterious anticipation, and they 
had to die without articulately uttering it. They are in the 
camp of the Unconverted 3 ; yet not as high messengers of 
rigorous though benignant truth, but as soft nattering sing- 
ers, and in pleasant fellowship will they live there: they are 
first adulated, then persecuted; they accomplish little for 
others ; they find no peace for themselves, but only death and 
the peace of the grave. We confess it is not without a certain 
mournful awe that we view the fate of these noble souls, so 
richly gifted, yet ruined to so little purpose with all their 
gifts. It seems to us there is a stern moral taught in this 
piece of history, — twice told us in our own time ! Surely to 
men of like genius, if there be any such, it carries with it a 
lesson of deep impressive significance. Surely it would become 
such a man, furnished for the highest of all enterprises, that 
of being the Poet of his Age, to consider well what it is that 

1 Like Burns, says Carlyle, Byron j n g that each had something to say, 
seems to have set his heart on lower though he might not feel quite clear as 
things. Poetry was not enough for to just what it was. 

him. Life had too many distractions, 3 Each wished to be a figure in the 

temptations, absorptions. He could world and was so; but it was bad for 

not manage them and poetry too. their poetic spirit and aspirations that 

2 We should express the idea by say- they were. 



ROBERT BURNS 91 

he attempts, and in what spirit he attempts it. For the words 
of Milton are true in all times, and were never truer than in 
this: "He who would write heroic poems must make his 
whole life a heroic poem." 1 If he cannot first so make his 
life, then let him hasten from this arena ; for neither its lofty 
glories, nor its fearful perils, are fit for him. Let him dwin- 
dle into a modish balladmonger ; let him worship and besing 
the idols of the time, and the time will not fail to reward 
him. If, indeed, he can endure to live in that capacity! 
Byron and Burns could not live as idol-priests, but the fire of 
their own hearts consumed them ; and better it was for them 
that they could not. For it is not in the favor of the great 
or of the small, but in a life of truth, and in the inexpugnable 
citadel of his own soul, that a Byron's or a Burns's strength 
must lie. Let the great stand aloof from him, or know how 
to reverence him. Beautiful is the union of wealth with favor 
and furtherance for literature; like the costliest flower-jar 
enclosing the loveliest amaranth. Yet let not the relation be 
mistaken. A true poet is not one whom they can hire by 
money or flattery to be a minister of their pleasures, their 
writer of occasional verses, their purveyor of table- wit; he 
cannot be their menial, he cannot even be their partisan. At 
the peril of both parties, let such a union be attempted ! 
Will a Courser of the Sun work softly in the harness of a 
Dray-horse? His hoofs are of fire, and his path is through 
the heavens, bringing light to all lands; will he lumber on 
mud highways dragging ale for earthly appetites from door 
to door? 

But we must stop short in these considerations, which 
would lead us to boundless lengths. We had something to 
say on the public moral character of Burns ; but this also we 
must forbear. We are far from regarding him as guilty 
before the world, as guiltier than the average; nay from 

1 Milton says this in writing of his own early aims and ambitions. 



92 ROBERT BURNS 

doubting that he is less guilty than one of ten thousand. 
Tried at a tribunal far more rigid than that where the Plebis- 
cite of common civic reputations are pronounced,, he has 
seemed to us even there 'less worthy of blame than of pity and 
wonder. But the world is habitually unjust in its judgments 
of such men: unjust on many grounds, of which this one 
may be stated as the substance: It decides, like a court of 
law, by dead statutes; and not positively but negatively, less 
on what is done right, than on what is or is not done wrong. 
Not the few inches of deflection from the mathematical orbit, 
which are so easily measured, but the ratio of these to the 
whole diameter, constitutes the real aberration. This orbit 
may be a planet's, its diameter the breadth of the solar sys- 
tem; or it may be a city hippodrome: nay the circle of a 
ginhorse, its diameter a score of feet or paces. But the inches 
of deflection only are measured : and it is assumed that the 
diameter of the ginhorse, and that of the planet, will yield 
the same ratio when compared with them ! Here lies the root 
of many a blind, cruel condemnation of Burnses. Swifts, 2 
Bousseaus, 3 which one never listens to with approval. Granted, 
the ship comes into harbor with shrouds and tackle damaged; 
the pilot is blameworthy ; he has not been all-wise and all- 
powerful: but to know how blameworthy, tell us first whether 
his voyage has been round the Globe, or only to Bamsgate 4 
and the Isle of Dogs." 

With our readers in general, with men of right feeling any- 
where, we are not required to plead for Burns. In pitying 
admiration he lies enshrined in all our hearts, in a far nobler 
mausoleum than that one of marble : neither will his Works, 

1 decisions by popular vote. ideas on life and society. 

* Jonathan Swift, the greatest of Eng- 4 an English watering-place, 

lish satirists, always felt that he did 6 a point running out into the Thames, 

not get his due in life. The meaning, of course, is that a man 

»Jean Jacques Rousseau, 1712-177S, who undertakes great things will be 

a French writer of great genius, who more likely to make some mistakes than 

aroused and inspired thousands by his one who attempts but little. 



ROBERT BURNS 93 

even as they are, pass away from the memory of men. While 
the Shakespeares and Miltons roll on like mighty rivers 
through the country of Thought, bearing fleets of traffickers 
and assiduous pearl-fishers on their waves; this little Val- 
elusa 1 Fountain will also arrest our eye: for this also is of 
Nature's own and most cunning workmanship, bursts from 
the depths of the earth, with a full gushing current, into the 
light of day; and' often will the traveler turn aside to drink 
of its clear waters, and muse among its rocks and pines ! 

1 more commonly called Vauclause, near Avignon, a favorite place of Petrarch's 




THOMAS HA lilMJ TON MACAULAY 



SAMUEL JOHNSON 

Samuel Johnson, one of the most eminent English writers 
of the eighteenth century, was the son of Michael Johnson, 
who was, at the beginning of that century, a magistrate 1 of 
Lichfield, and a bookseller of great note in the midland coun- 
ties. 2 Michael's abilities and attainments seem to have been 
considerable. He was so well acquainted with the contents of 
the volumes which he exposed to sale, that the country rectors 
of Staffordshire and Worcestershire thought him an oracle 
on points of learning. Between him and the clergy, indeed, 
there was a strong religious and political sympathy. 3 He 
was a zealous churchman, and, though he had qualified him- 
self for municipal office by taking the oaths* to the sovereigns 
in possession, was to the last a Jacobite 5 in heart. At his 
house, a house which is still pointed out to every traveler who 
visits Lichfield, Samuel was born on the 18th of September, 
1709. In the child, the physical, intellectual, and moral 
peculiarities which afterward distinguished the man were 
plainly discernible — great muscular strength, accompanied by 
much awkwardness and many infirmities; great quickness of 
parts, 6 with a morbid propensity to sloth and procrastination ; 
a kind and generous heart, with a gloomy and irritable tem- 
per. He had inherited from his ancestors a scrofulous taint, 

1 He had a position in the city govern- to regard the Georges as usurpers, and 
ment. were therefore unwilling to take the 

2 Lichfield is a town of importance in oaths of supremacy and allegiance. 
Staffordshire. Those who held office, like Michael John- 

J His son retained this general feeling. son, of course had to do so. 

See p. 106. 5 one who sympathised with the exiled 

4 The Revolution of 168S put the main family of James II (Jacobus in Latin), 

line of Stuarts off the throne of England, 6 liveliness of intelligence; note the 

and settled the succession in other contrasting qualities. Macaulay was 

branches of the royal family. For a quick to notice such things. 
long time there were many who affected 



96 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

which it was beyond the power of medicine to remove. His 
parents were weak enough to believe that the royal touch was 
a specific for this malady. 1 In his third year he was taken 
up to London, inspected by the court surgeon, prayed over by 
the court chaplains, and stroked and presented with a piece 
of gold by Queen Anne. One of his earliest recollections was 
that of a stately lady in a diamond stomacher and a long 
black hood. Her hand was applied in vain. The boy's fea- 
tures, which were originally noble and not irregular, were 
distorted by his malady. His cheeks were deeply scarred. He 
lost for a time the sight of one eye; and he saw but very 
imperfectly with the other. But the force of his mind over- 
came every impediment. Indolent as he was, he acquired 
knowledge with such ease and rapidity that at every school 
to which he was sent he was soon the best scholar. From six- 
teen to eighteen he resided at home, and was left to his own 
devices. He learned much at this time, though his studies 
were without guidance and without plan. 2 He ransacked his 
father's shelves, dipped into a multitude of books, read what 
was interesting, and passed over what was dull. An ordinary 
lad would have acquired little or no useful knowledge in such 
a way ; but much that was dull to ordinary lads was interest- 
ing to Samuel. He read little Greek, for his proficiency in 
that language was not such that he could take much pleasure 
in the masters of Attic poetry and eloquence. But he had left 
school a good Latinist, and he soon acquired, in the large and 
miscellaneous library of which he now had the command, an 
extensive knowledge of Latin literature. That Augustan deli- 
cacy of taste, which is the boast of the great public schools of 

1 This was a popular superstition: see scholar, but neglected Greek, perhaps 
Macbeth IV, iii, 140-160. The remark- because it was harder as a language, per- 
able thing is that Michael Johnson haps because his mind had more sym- 
should have fallen in with it. pathy with the Roman virtues of sense 

2 Education in those days meant al- and order than with the subtler and 
most entirely a knowledge of the clas- more sensitive excellences of the Greeks, 
sica; Johnson became a good Latin 



SAMUEL JOHNSON 97 

England, he never possessed. 1 But he was early familiar with 
some classical writers who were quite unknown to the best 
scholars in the sixth form 2 at Eton. He was peculiarly 
attracted by the works of the great restorers of learning. 
Once, while searching for some apples, he found a huge folio 
volume of Petrarch's 3 works. The name excited his curiosity, 
and he eagerly devoured hundreds of pages. Indeed, the 
diction and versification of his own Latin compositions 4 show 
that he had paid at least as much attention to modern copies 
from the antique as to the original models. 

While he was thus irregularly educating himself, his family 
was sinking into hopeless poverty. Old Michael Johnson was 
much better qualified to pore upon books, and to talk about 
them, than to trade in them. His business declined; his debts 
increased ; it was with difficulty that the daily expenses of his 
household were defrayed. It was out of his power to support 
his son at either university, 5 but a wealthy neighbor offered 
assistance; and, in reliance on promises which proved to be 
of very little value, Samuel was entered at Pembroke Col- 
lege, 6 Oxford. When the young scholar presented himself to 
the rulers of that society, 7 they were amazed not more by his 
ungainly figure and eccentric manners than by the quantity 
of extensive and curious information which he had picked up 

1 The great boarding schools of Eng- but it could be possessed by the few only 
land, of which Eton, Harrow, Rugby, who had leisure to cultivate it, and was, 
Winchester are now the best known, are therefore, among the English a mark of 
called public schools in distinction to elegant education. 

the smaller private boarding schools 5 Oxford and Cambridge were at that 

2 The sixth form is the highest class time the two great universities in Eng- 
in an English school. land. 

3 Petrarch was one of the earliest, most 6 The university of Oxford is made up 
enthusiastic, and most famous students of a number of colleges. The univer- 
of the Revival of Learning. He is now sity determines the degrees, examina- 
rather better remembered forhis Italian tions, public lectures, while the college 
poetry than for his classical scholarship. attends to the daily living of the student 

4 The writing of Latin verse used to and his special teaching from day today, 
be the great accomplishment of English 7 The English college is, theoretically, 
scholarship. It was entirely useless, a society of scholars who live together. 



98 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

during many months of desultory but not unprofitable study. 
On the first day of his residence, ho surprised his teachers by 
quoting Macrobius 1 ; ami one of the most learned among 
them declared that he had never known a freshman of equal 
attainments. 

At Oxford, Johnson resided during about three years. 8 
He was poor, even to raggedness: and his appearance excited 
a mirth and a pity which were equally intolerable to his 
haughty spirit. He was driven from the quadrangle of Christ 
Church 8 by the sneering looks which the members of that 
aristoeratieal society cast at the holes in his shoes. Some 
charitable person placed a new pair at his door: but lie 
spurned them away in a fury. Distress made him, not servile, 
but reckless and ungovernable. No opulent gentleman com- 
moner. 4 panting for one-and-twenty/' could have treated the 
academical authorities with more gross disrespect. The needy 
scholar was generally \o be seen under the gate of Pembroke, 
a gate now adorned with his effigy, haranguing a circle of lads. 
over whom, in spite o( his tattered gown and dirty linen, his 
wit and audacity gave him an undisputed ascendency. In 
every mutiny against the discipline oi' the college he was the 
ringleader. Much was pardoned, however, to a youth so 
highly distinguished by abilities and acquirements. He had 
early made himself known by turning Tope's "Messiah"'"' into 
Latin verse. The style and rhythm, indeed, were not exactly 
Yirgilian, 7 but the translation found many admirers, ami was 
read with pleasure by Tope himself. 

1 a late Latin Author, not often road from oertein duties :ind allowed special 

in school or college. privileges. 

• the usual period of residence at an ' longing to come of age and be mas- 

Bnglish university. ter of his own property. 

3 the largest of the Oxford colleges, 6 an adaptation to Christian ideas of 

and the most exclusive and aristocratic. the fourth eclogue of Virgil. 

formerly a student of good family ' Of. p. 90; Virgil was the great poet 

who paid extra fees and was relieved of the Augustan age. 



SAMUEL JOHNSON 99 

The time drew near at which Johnson would, in the ordi- 
nary course of things, have become a Bachelor of Arts; but 
he was at the end o( his resources. 1 Those promises of sup- 
port on which he had relied had not been kept. His family 
could do nothing for him. II is debts to Oxford tradesmen 
were small indeed, yet larger than he could pay. In the 
autumn of 1731 he was under the necessity of quitting the 
university without a degree. 3 In the following winter his 
father died. The old man left but a pittance; and of that 
pittance almost the whole was appropriated to the support of 
his widow. The property to which Samuel succeeded 
amounted to no more than twenty pounds. 

His life, during the thirty years which followed, was one 
hard struggle with poverty. The misery of that struggle 
needed no aggravation, but was aggravated by the sufferings 
of an unsound body and an unsound mind. Before the young 
man left the university, his hereditary malady had broken 
forth in a singularly cruel form. He had become an incurable 
hypochondriac. 3 He said long after that he had been mad 
all his life, or at least not perfectly sane; and, in truth, 
eccentricities less strange than his have often been thought 
grounds sufficient for absolving felons, and for setting aside 
wills. His grimaces, his gestures, his mutterings. sometimes 
diverted and sometimes terrified people who did not know 
him. At a dinner-table he would, in a fit of absence, stoop 
down and twitch off a lady's shoe. Tie would amaze a draw- 
ing room by suddenly ejaculating a clause of the Lord's 
Prayer. He would conceive an unintelligible aversion to a 
particular alley, and perform a great circuit rather than see 
the hateful place. He would set his heart on touching every 

1 He would have been graduated, but well known as a scholar and a man of 

that it was necessary to pay certain letters, he was given the degrees of If. A. 

fees, and also to pay all debts due in Ox- and LL.D.. cf. p. 126. 

ford. This Johnson could not do. s one subject to exaggerated fits of 

: At a later time when he had become melancholv. 



100 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

post in the streets through which he walked. If t>y any 
chance he missed a post, he would go back a hundred yards 
and repair the omission. Under the influence of his disease 
his senses became morbidly torpid, and his imagination mor- 
bidly active. At one time he would stand poring on the town 
clock without being able to tell the hour. At another, he 
would distinctly hear his mother, who was many miles off, 
calling him by his name. But this was not the worst. A 
deep melancholy took possession of him, and gave a dark tinge 
to all his views of human nature and of human destiny. Such 
wretchedness as he endured has driven many men to shoot 
themselves or drown themselves. But he was under no 
temptation to commit suicide. He was sick of life; but he 
was afraid of death; and he shuddered at every sight or 
sound which reminded him of the inevitable hour. In reli- 
gion he found but little comfort during his long and frequent 
fits of dejection; for his religion partook of his own charac- 
ter. 1 The light from heaven shone on him indeed, but not in 
a direct line, or with its own pure splendor. The rays had 
to struggle through a disturbing medium : they reached him 
refracted, dulled, and discolored by the thick gloom which 
had settled on his soul ; and, though they might be sufficiently 
clear to guide him, were too dim to cheer him. 

With such infirmities of body and of mind, this celebrated 
man was left, at two-and-twenty, to fight his way through 
the world. He remained during about five years in the mid- 
land counties. At Lichfield, his birthplace and his early 
home, he had inherited some friends and acquired others. He 
was kindly noticed by Henry Hervey, 2 a gay officer of noble 
family, who happened to be quartered there. Gilbert Walmes- 
ley, registrar of the ecclesiastical court of the diocese, 3 a man 

1 See what Macaulay says of it near 3 Lichfield was the seat of a bishop, 
the end of the essay. and the ecclesiastical court of the dio- 

2 For this kindness Johnson was after- cese was held there, 
wards consistently grateful: cf. p. 104. 



SAMUEL JOHNSON 101 

of distinguished parts, learning, and knowledge of the world, 
did himself honor by patronizing the young adventurer, whose 
repulsive person, unpolished manners, and squalid garb, 
moved many of the petty aristocracy of the neighborhood to 
laughter or to disgust. At Lichfield, however, Johnson could 
find no way of earning a livelihood. He became usher 1 of a 
grammar school in Leicestershire; he resided as a humble 
companion in the house of a country gentleman ; but a life of 
dependence was insupportable to his haughty spirit. He 
repaired to Birmingham, and there earned a few guineas by 
literary drudgery. In that town he printed a translation, lit- 
tle noticed at the time, and long forgotten, of a Latin book 
about Abyssinia. 2 He then put forth proposals for publish- 
ing by subscription the poems of Politian, 3 with notes con- 
taining a history of modern Latin verse; but subscriptions 
did not come in, and the volume never appeared. 

While leading this vagrant and miserable life, Johnson fell 
in love. The object of his passion was Mrs. Elizabeth Porter, 
a widow who had children as old as himself. To ordinary 
spectators, the lady appeared to be a short, fat, coarse woman, 
painted half an inch thick, 4 dressed in gaudy colors, and fond 
of exhibiting provincial airs and graces which were not ex- 
actly those of the Queensberrys and Lepels. 5 To Johnson, 
however, whose passions were strong, whose eyesight was too 
weak to distinguish ceruse from natural bloom, and who had 
seldom or never been in the same room with a woman of real 
fashion, his Titty, as he called her, was the most beautiful, 
graceful, and accomplished of her sex. That his admiration 

1 an underteacher. as in modern Italian verse. 

2 Note the connection with Rasselas, * The use of paint, as well as powder, 
P- 120. was very common in the eighteenth 

3 one of the chief figures of the Re- century. 

vival of Learning. With Johnson's love « Lady Kitty Queensbury and Lady 

for the restorers of learning, like Pe- Mary Lepel were two famous beauties 

trarch, it was natural that he should of the age of Queen Anne, 
have been interested in Politian. as well 



102 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

was unfeigned cannot be doubted ; for she was as poor as him- 
self. She accepted, with a readiness which did her little honor, 
the addresses of a suitor who might have been her son. The 
marriage, however, in spite of occasional wranglings, proved 
happier than might have been expected. The lover continued 
to be under the illusions of the wedding-day till the lady 
died in her sixty-fourth year. On her monument he placed 
an inscription extolling the charms of her person and of her 
manners; and when, long after her decease, he had occasion 
to mention her, he exclaimed, with a tenderness half ludicrous, 
half pathetic, "Pretty creature !" 

His marriage made it necessary for him to exert himself 
more strenuously than he had hitherto done. He took a house 
in the neighborhood of his native town, and advertised for 
pupils. But eighteen months passed away, and only three 
pupils came to his academy. Indeed, his appearance was so 
strange, and his temper so violent, that his schoolroom must 
have resembled an ogre's den. Nor was the tawdry, painted 
grandmother whom he called his Titty, well qualified to 
make provision for the comfort of young gentlemen. David 
Garrick, 1 who was one of the pupils, used many years later 
to throw the best company of London into convulsions of 
laughter by mimicking the endearments of this extraordinary 
pair. 

At length Johnson, in the twenty-eighth year of his age, 
determined to seek his fortune in the capital 2 as a literary 
adventurer. He set out with a few guineas, three acts of the 
tragedy of "Irene" in manuscript, 3 and two or three letters of 
introduction from his friend Walmesley. 

Never since literature became a calling in England had it 

1 Garrick afterward became the great ' Long afterwards, when Garrick had 
actor so well remembered to-day. become a famous actor and the manager 

2 There would be many more oppor- of Drury Lane Theatre, Irene was put 
tunities for literary hack work in Lon- on the stage: cf. p. 114. 

don than in the smaller towns. 



SAMUEL JOHNSON LV'3 

been a less gainful calling than at the time when Johnson 
took up his residence in London. In the preceding genera- 
tion, a writer of eminent merit 1 was sure to be munificently 
rewarded by the government. 2 The least that he could expect 
was a pension or a sinecure 3 place; and, if he showed any 
aptitude for politics, he might hope to be a member of parlia- 
ment, a lord of the treasury, an ambassador, a secretary of 
state. 4 It would be easy, on the other hand, to name several 
writers of the nineteenth century of whom the least successful 
has received forty thousand pounds from the booksellers. 5 
But Johnson entered on his vocation in the most dreary part 
of the dreary interval which separated two ages of prosperity. 
Literature had ceased to nourish under the patronage of the 
great, and had not begun to nourish under the patronage of 
the public. 6 One man of letters, indeed, Pope, 7 had acquired 
by his pen what was then considered as a handsome fortune, 
and lived on a footing of equality with nobles and ministers 
of state. But this was a solitary exception. Even an author 
whose reputation was established, and whose works were popu- 
lar; such an author as Thomson, 8 whose "Seasons" were in 
every library; such an author as Fielding, 9 whose "Pasquin" 

1 Addison is a good example: he was 5 Macaulay was himself an example 
appointed to one profitable position af- and received considerable sums for his 
ter another by his friends in political Essays and History. 

power, and at the time of his death was 6 as at the present time when an 

Secretary of State. author who pleases the public is well re- 

2 the ministers in power. Newspa- warded by the sale of his works. 

pers being infrequent, appeal was made 7 Pope was a Roman Catholic and 

to the public in pamphlets, poems, therefore attached himself to neither 

books, etc. political party. He published his works 

3 a position with a salary and few or by general subscription and received 
no duties. handsome sums. 

4 Macaulay was very probably think- James Thomson, 1700-1748, is still 
ing of Steele who became member of well known as a poet of nature. 
Parliament, Montague who became one 9 Henry Fielding, 1707-1754, is now 
of the Lords of the Treasury and Chan- best known for his novels. Macaulay 
cellor of the Exchequer, Prior who was does not mention his Pasquin as his best 
an Ambassador, and Addison who be- work, but as a very popular play like 
came Secretary of State. He mentions the Beggars' Opera. 

all these in his other essay on Johnson. 



104 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

had had a greater run than any drama since the "Beggars' 
Opera," was sometimes glad to obtain, by pawning his best 
coat, the means of dining on tripe at a cookshop underground, 
where he could wipe his hands, after his greasy meal, on the 
back of a Newfoundland dog. 1 It is easy, therefore, to imag- 
ine what humiliations and privations must have awaited the 
novice who had still to earn a name. One of the publishers 
to whom Johnson applied for employment, measured with a 
scornful eye that athletic, though uncouth, frame, and ex- 
claimed, "You had better get a porter's knot, and carry 
trunks." Nor was the advice bad; for a porter was likely to 
be as plentifully fed, and as comfortably lodged, as a poet. 

Some time appears to have elapsed before Johnson was able 
to form any literary connection from which he could expect 
more than bread for the day which was passing over him. He 
never forgot the generosity with which Hervey, who was now 
residing in London, relieved his wants during this time of 
trial. "Harry Hervey," said the old philosopher many years 
later, "was a vicious man; but he was very kind to me. If 
you call a dog Hervey, I shall love him." At Hervey's table 
Johnson sometimes enjoyed feasts which were made more 
agreeable by contrast. But in general he dined, and thought 
that he dined well, on sixpennyworth of meat and a penny- 
worth of bread at an alehouse near Drury Lane. 

The effect of the privations and sufferings which he endured 
at this time was discernible to the last in his temper and his 
deportment. His manners had never been courtly. They 
now became almost savage. Being frequently under the neces- 
sity of wearing shabby coats and dirty shoes, he became a con- 
firmed sloven. Being often very hungry when he sat down 
to his meals, he contracted a habit of eating with ravenous 
greediness. Even to the end of his life, and even at the tables 
of the great, the sight of food affected him as it affects wild 

1 This is one of the many special cases which Macaulay loved, and so often used to 
make definite his point. 



SAMUEL JOHNSON 105 

beasts and birds of prey. His taste in cookery, formed in sub- 
terranean ordinaries 1 and a-la-mode beef-shops, was far from 
delicate. Whenever he was so fortunate as to have near him 
a hare that had been kept too long, or a meat-pie made with 
rancid butter, he gorged himself with such violence that his 
veins swelled, and the moisture broke out on his forehead. 
The affronts which his poverty emboldened stupid and low- 
minded men to offer him, would have broken a mean spirit 
into sycophancy, but made him rude even to ferocity. Unhap- 
pily the insolence which, while it was defensive, was pardon- 
able, and in some sense respectable, accompanied him into 
societies where he was treated with courtesy and kindness. 
He was repeatedly provoked into striking those who had taken 
liberties with him. All the sufferers, however, were wise 
enough to abstain from talking about their beatings, except 
Osborne, the most rapacious and brutal of booksellers, who 
proclaimed everywhere that he had been knocked down by the 
huge fellow whom he had hired to puff the Harleian Library. 2 
About a year after Johnson had begun to reside in London, 
he was fortunate enough to obtain regular employment from 
Cave, 3 an enterprising and intelligent bookseller, who was 
proprietor and editor of the Gentleman s Magazine.* That 
journal, just entering on the ninth year of its long existence, 
was the only periodical work in the kingdom which then had 
what would now be called a large circulation. It was, indeed, 
the chief source of parliamentary intelligence. It was not 
then safe, even during a recess, to publish an account of the 
proceedings of either House without some disguise. 5 Cave, 

i a sort of eating-house; subterranean these two ventures of his. 
merely means that it was in a basement. 4 still in existence, having weathered 

2 Osborne had purchased the library many changes of fashion. 

of Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, and 5 A member of Parliament was privi- 

employed Johnson to make a catalogue leged to say what he thought right, with- 

of it. The story of the quarrel was ex- out fear of having his words reported by 

aggerated, but had good foundation. irresponsible persons. Hence it was 

3 That Edward Cave was an enterpris- unlawful to publish reports of parlia- 
ing man is shown by the permanence of mentary proceedings. 



106 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

however, ventured to entertain his readers with what he called 
Reports of the Debates of the Senate of Lilliput. France 
was Blefuscu; London was Milendo 1 ; pounds were sprugs; 
the Duke of Newcastle was the Nardac Secretary of State; 
Lord Hardwicke was the Hurgo Hickrad ; and William Pulte- 
ney was Wingul Pulnub. To write the speeches was, during 
several years, the business of Johnson. He was generally 
furnished with notes, meager, indeed, and inaccurate, of what 
had been said; but sometimes he had to find arguments and 
eloquence both for the ministry and for the opposition. He 
was himself a Tory, not from rational conviction — for his 
serious opinion was that one form of government was just 
as good or as bad as another — but from mere passion, 2 such 
as inflamed the Capulets against the Montagues, 3 or the Blues 
of the Roman circus against the Greens. 4 In his infancy he 
had heard so much talk about the villanies of the Whigs, and 
the dangers of the Church, that he had become a furious 
partisan when he could scarcely speak. Before he was three 
he had insisted on being taken to hear Sacheverell 5 preach at 
Lichfield Cathedral, and had listened to the sermon with as 
much respect, and probably with as much intelligence, as any 
Staffordshire squire in the congregation. The work which 
had been begun in the nursery had been completed by the 
university. Oxford, when Johnson resided there, was the 
most Jacobitical place in England, 6 and Pembroke was one 
of the most Jacobitical colleges in Oxford. The prejudices 
which he brought up to London were scarcely less absurd 

1 Milendo was the capital of Lilliput. 4 the colors of the charioteers of the 
Blefuscu, a country with which the Roman circus. 

Lilliputians were at war; the other 5 Dr. Henry Sacheverell was a man of 

names will also be found in Gulliver, no great note himself, but his preaching 

2 Macaulay explains that by "mere strong Tory doctrines in 1709 led to his 
passion" he means the gradually formed being tried before the House of Lords 
feeling or prejudice of childhood or and suspended from preaching so that 
j'outh. he became a political hero. 

s The feud of the Montagues and 6 Oxford had even in the time of 

Capulets is the background of the story Charles I. been devoted to the Stuart 
of Romeo and Juliet. cause. 



SAMUEL JOHNSON 107 

than those of his own "Tom Tempest." 1 Charles II. and 
James II. 2 were two of the best kings that ever reigned. 
Laud, 3 a poor creature who never did, said, or wrote any- 
thing indicating more than the ordinary capacity of an old 
woman, was a prodigy of parts and learning over whose tomb 
Art and Genius still continued to weep. Hampden 4 deserved 
no more honorable name than that of "the zealot of rebellion." 
Even the ship-money, condemned not less decidedly by Falk- 
land and Clarendon 5 than by the bitterest Roundheads, 6 John- 
son would not pronounce to have been an unconstitutional 
impost. Under a government the mildest that had ever been 
known in the world — under a government which allowed to 
the people an unprecedented liberty of speech and action, 7 he 
fancied that he was a slave; he assailed the ministry with 
Dbloquy which refuted itself, and regretted the lost freedom 
and happiness of those golden days in which a writer who 
had taken but one-tenth part of the license allowed to him, 
would have been pilloried; mangled with the shears, whipped 
at the cart's tail, and flung into a noisome dungeon to die. 8 
He hated dissenters 9 and stock-jobbers, 10 the excise and the 

1 a typical but exaggerated Jacobite ft was not merely zealots who opposed 
in Johnson's Idler. the ship money. 

2 the later Stuarts whose rule brought 6 The Puritans were so called because 
about the Revolution of 1688. they cut their hair short instead of wear- 
ing it in long locks after the fashion of 

3 Archbishop of Canterbury under the day. 
Charles I., who did much to hasten the 

Civil Wars. 7 The verv ^ act that he was allowed by 

the government to write as he did, 

4 Hampden refused to pay ship money, showed that he enjoyed perfect freedom 
an unparliamentary tax of Charles I., of speech. 

and became one of the leaders of the 

popular party. 8 M in the da y 3 of Charles I 

■ Falkland and Clarendon were mod- ' Those who would not accede to the 

erates in political opinion. They felt ^^ed church were in general 

the soundness of some of the popular "higs. 

positions in the Civil War, yet main- 10 The moneyed interest was chiefly 

tained their allegiance to the royal side. Whig as compared with the Tory land- 

Macaulay mentions them to show that owners. 



108 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

army/ septennial parliaments, 2 and continental connections. 3 
He long had an aversion to the Scotch, an aversion of which 
he could not remember the commencement, but which, he 
owned, had probably originated in his abhorrence of the con- 
duct of the nation during the Great Eebellion. 4 It is easy 
to guess in what manner debates on great party questions 
were likely to be reported by a man whose judgment was so 
much disordered by party spirit. A show of fairness was 
indeed necessary to the prosperity of the magazine. But 
Johnson long afterward owned that, though he had saved 
appearances, he had taken care that the Whig dogs should 
not have the best of it; and, in fact, every passage which has 
lived, every passage which bears the marks of his higher facul- 
ties, is put into the mouth of some member of the opposition. 
A few weeks after Johnson had entered on these obscure 
labors, he published a work which at once placed him high 
among the writers of his age. It is probable that what he 
had suffered during his first year, in London had often 
reminded him of some parts of that noble poem in which 
Juvenal 5 has described the misery and degradation of a needy 
man of letters, lodged among the pigeons' nests in the tot- 
tering garrets that overhung the streets of Rome. Pope's 
admirable imitations of Horace's Satires and Epistles 6 had 
recently appeared, were in every hand, and were by many 
readers thought superior to the originals. What Pope had 
done for Horace, Johnson aspired to do for Juvenal. The 
enterprise was bold, and yet judicious. For between Johnson 

» He hated the excise and the army 3 particularly with Hanover, of which 

because the latter, supported chiefly by the Georges were electors, as well as 

the former, had been the constant re- being Kings of England, 

liance of the Whig ministries, as of the 4 The Scotch had surrendered Charles 

Puritans before them. L to the Parliament in 1648. 

2 The practice whereby a new parlia- 6 the third of Juvenal's satires, 

ment must be called at least every seven 6 Pope wrote in many forms, but the 

years, was a check to a possible expan- most successful are thought to be those 

sion of royal power by continuing a sub- sketches of life and manners called 

servient parliament year after year. Epistles and Satires. 



SAMUEL JOHNSON 109 

and Juvenal there was much in common, much more certainly 
than between Pope and Horace. 

Johnson's "London" appeared without his name in May, 
1738. He received only ten guineas for this stately and 
vigorous poem; but the sale was rapid, and the success com- 
plete. A second edition was required within a week. Those 
small critics who are always desirous to lower established 
reputations ran about proclaiming that the anonymous satir- 
ist was superior to Pope in Pope's own peculiar department of 
literature. It ought to be remembered, to the honor of Pope, 
that he joined heartily in the applause with which the appear- 
ance of a rival genius was welcomed. 1 He made inquiries 
about the author of "London." Such a man, he said, could 
not be long concealed. The name was soon discovered; and 
Pope, with great kindness, exerted himself to obtain an aca- 
demical degree and the mastership of a grammar school for 
the poor young poet. The attempt failed, and Johnson 
remained a bookseller's hack. 

It does not appear that these two men, the most eminent 
writer of the generation which was going out, and the most 
eminent writer of the generation which was coming in, ever 
saw each other. They lived in very different circles; one 
surrounded by dukes and earls, the other by starving pam- 
phleteers and index-makers. 2 Among Johnson's associates at 
this time may be mentioned Boyse, 3 who, when his shirts 
were pledged,* scrawled Latin verses sitting up in bed with 
his arms through two holes in his blanket ; who composed very 
respectable sacred poetry when he was sober, and who was 
at last run over by a hackney coach when he was drunk; 
Hoole, surnamed the metaphysical tailor, who, instead of 
attending to his measures, used to trace geometrical diagrams 

1 Pope's ungenerous acts are often 3 No more need be remembered of 
better remembered than his kindnesses. these obscure men of letters than is here 

2 Making an index used to be regarded told. 

as a piece of wholly mechanical labor. 4 put in pawn. 



110 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

on the board where he sat cross-legged; and the penitent 
impostor, George Psalmanazar, who, after poring all day, in 
a humble lodging, on the folios of Jewish rabbis and Chris- 
tian fathers, indulged himself at night with literary and 
theological conversation at an alehouse in the city. But the 
most remarkable of the persons with whom at this time John- 
son consorted, was Kichard Savage, an earPs son, 1 a shoe- 
maker's apprentice, who had seen life in all its forms, who 
had feasted among blue ribbands 2 in St. James's Square, and 
had lain with fifty pounds weight of irons on his legs in the 
condemned ward of Newgate. 3 This man had, after many 
vicissitudes of fortune, sunk at last into abject and hopeless 
poverty. His pen had failed him. His patrons had been 
taken away by death, or estranged by the riotous profusion 
with which he squandered their bounty, and the ungrateful 
insolence with which he rejected their advice. He now lived 
by begging. He dined on venison and champagne whenever 
he had been so fortunate as to borrow a guinea. If his quest- 
ing had been unsuccessful, he appeased the rage of hunger 
with some scraps of broken meat, and lay down to rest under 
the Piazza of Covent Garden 4 in warm weather, and in cold 
weather as near as he could get to the furnace of a glass-house. 
Yet, in his misery, he was still an agreeable companion. He 
had an inexhaustible store of anecdotes about that gay and 
brilliant world from which he was now an outcast. He had 
observed the great men of both parties in hours of careless 
relaxation; had seen the leaders of opposition without the 
mask of patriotism; and had heard the prime minister roar 
with laughter, and tell stories not over decent. During some 
months Savage lived in the closest familiarity with Johnson ; 
and then the friends parted, not without tears. Johnson 

1 but not by legal marriage. tal cases. 

2 the insignia of the Order of the 4 a great market-place of London; it 
Garter. was surrounded by a sort of colonnade 

* a famous prison, especially for capi- called the Piazza. 






SAMUEL JOHNSON 111 

remained in London to drudge for Cave. Savage went to 
the west of England; lived there as he had lived everywhere; 
and, in 1743, died, penniless and heart-broken, in Bristol jail. 

Soon after his death, while the public curiosity was strongly 
excited about his extraordinary character, and his not less 
extraordinary adventures, a life of him appeared, widely dif- 
ferent from the catchpenny lives of eminent men which were 
then a staple article of manufacture in Grub Street. 1 The 
style was indeed deficient in ease and variety; and the writer 
was evidently too partial to the Latin element of our lan- 
guage. But the little work, with all its faults, was a master- 
piece. No finer specimen of literary biography existed in any 
language, living or dead; and a discerning critic might have 
confidently predicted that the author was destined to be the 
founder of a new school of English eloquence. 2 

The "Life of Savage" was anonymous; but it was well 
known in literary circles that Johnson was the writer. Dur- 
ing the three years which followed, he produced no important 
work; but he was/iot, and indeed could not be, idle. The 
fame of his abilities and learning continued to grow. War- 
burton 3 pronounced him a man of parts and genius; and the 
praise of Wapurton was then no light thing. Such was 
Johnson's reputation, that, in 1747, 4 several eminent book- 
sellers combined to employ him in the arduous work of pre- 
paring a Dictionary of the English Language 5 in two folio 
volumes. The sum which they agreed to pay him was only 
fifteen hundred guineas; and out of this sum he had to pay 
several poor men of letters who assisted him in the humbler 
parts of his task. 

The Prospectus of the Dictionary he addressed to the Earl 

1 a street in which the hack-writers 4 In spite of severe treatment, John- 
were supposed to lodge. son had made a reputation in ten years. 

2 We should better say "rhetorical 6 There had been a number of diction- 
prose." aries, but Johnson was a man of such 

8 William Warburton, 1698-1779, after- reading and intellect that his dictionary 
ward Bishop of Gloucester, a well- stands out above all of the century, 
known critic and theologian of the day. 



112 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

of Chesterfield. 1 Chesterfield had long been celebrated for 
the politeness of his manners, the brilliancy of his wit, and 
the delicacy of his taste. He was acknowledged to be the 
finest speaker in the House of Lords. He had recently gov- 
erned Ireland, at a momentous conjuncture, with eminent 
firmness, wisdom, and humanity; and he had since become 
Secretary of State. He received Johnson's homage with the 
most winning affability, and requited it with a few guineas, 
bestowed doubtless in a very graceful manner, but was by no 
means desirous to see all his carpets blackened with the Lon- 
don mud, and his soups and wines thrown to right and left 
over the gowns of fine ladies and the waistcoats of fine gentle- 
men, by an absent, awkward scholar, who gave strange starts, 
and uttered strange growls, who dressed like a scarecrow, and 
ate like a cormorant. During some time Johnson continued 
to call on his patron ; but, after being repeatedly told by the 
porter that his lordship was not at home, took the hint, and 
ceased to present himself at the inhospitable door. 

Johnson had flattered himself that he should have com- 
pleted his Dictionary by the end of 1750; but it was not till 
1755 that he at length gave his huge volumes to the world. 
During the seven years which he passed in the drudgery of 
penning definitions and marking quotations for transcription, 
he sought for relaxation in literary labor of a more agreeable 
kind. In 1749 he published the "Vanity of Human Wishes/' 
an excellent imitation of the Tenth Satire of Juvenal. It is, 
in truth not easy to say whether the palm belongs to the 
ancient or to the modern poet. The couplets in which the 
fall of Wolsey is described, though lofty and sonorous, are 
feeble when compared with the wonderful lines which bring 
before us all Rome in tumult on the day of the fall of Sejanus, 
the laurels on the doorposts, the white bull stalking toward 

1 Johnson followed the usual practice pretensions to literature as well as a 
of seeking to interest some man of im- reputation for fashion and breeding 
portance. Chesterfield was a man with that has made him famous. 



SAMUEL JOHNSON 113 

the Capitol, the statues rolling down from their pedestals, the 
flatterers of the disgraced minister running to see him dragged 
with a hook through the streets, and to have a kick at his 
carcass before it is hurled into the Tiber. It must be owned, 
too, that in the concluding passage the Christian moralist has 
not made the most of his advantages, and has fallen decidedly 
short of the sublimity of his Pagan model. On the other 
hand, Juvenal's Hannibal must yield to Johnson's Charles 1 ; 
and Johnson's vigorous and pathetic enumeration of the mis- 
eries of a literary life must be allowed to be superior to 
Juvenal's lamentation over the fate of Demosthenes and 
Cicero. 

For the copyright of the "Vanity of Human Wishes" John- 
son received only fifteen guineas. 

A few days after the publication of this poem, his tragedy, 
begun many years before, was brought on the stage. His 
pupil, David Garrick, had, in 1741, made his appearance on 
a humble stage in Goodman's Fields, had at once risen to the 
first place among actors, and was now, after several years of 
almost uninterrupted success, manager of Drury Lane Thea- 
ter. The relation between him and his old preceptor was of 
a very singular kind. They repelled each other strongly, and 
yet attracted each other strongly. Nature had made them of 
very different clay; and circumstances had fully brought out 
the natural peculiarities of both. Sudden prosperity had 
turned Garrick's head. Continued adversity had soured John- 
son's temper. Johnson saw, with more envy than became so 
great a man, the villa, the plate, the china, the Brussels car- 
pet, which the little mimic had got by repeating, with gri- 
maces and gesticulations, what wiser men had written 2 ; and 
the exquisitely sensitive vanity of Garrick was galled by the 

i Charles XII. of Sweden. The re- grew pale, 

markable passage describing his for- To point a moral or adorn a tale. 

T a 2 This is rather a contemptuous view- 
tunes ends: 

"He left a name at which the world of the art of the actor. 



114 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

thought that, while all the rest of the world was applauding 
him, he could obtain from one morose cynic, whose opinion 
it was impossible to despise, scarcely any compliment not 
acidulated with scorn. Yet the two Lichfield men had so 
many early recollections in common, and sympathized with 
each other on so many points on which they sympathized with 
nobody else in the vast population of the capital, that, though 
the master was often provoked by the monkey-like imperti- 
nence of the pupil, and the pupil by the bearish rudeness of 
the master, they remained friends till they were parted by 
death. Garrick now brought "Irene" out with alterations 
sufficient to displease the author, yet not sufficient to make the 
piece pleasing to the audience. 1 The public, however, listened 
with little emotion, but with much civility, to five acts of 
monotonous declamation. After nine representations the play 
was withdrawn. It is, indeed, altogether unsuited to the 
stage, and, even when perused in the closet, will be found 
hardly worthy of the author. He had not the slightest notion 
of what blank verse should be. A change in the last syllable 
of every other line 2 would make the versification of the 
"Vanity of Human Wishes" closely resemble the versification 
of "Irene." The poet, however, cleared, by his benefit-nights, 
and by the sale of the copyright of his tragedy, about three 
hundred pounds, then a great sum in his estimation. 

About a year after the representation of "Irene," he began 
to publish a series of short essays on morals, manners, and 
literature. This species of composition had been brought into 
fashion by the success of the Tatler, and by the still more 
brilliant success of the Spectator. A crowd of small writers 
had vainly attempted to rival Addison. The Lay Monastery, 
the Censor, the Freethinker, the Plain Dealer, the Champion, 
and other works of the same kind, 3 had had their short day. 

'Macaulay's epigrammatic way of » The number of these periodicals was 
putting things is well illustrated by this very great. In the course of the eight- 
statement which is probably quite true. eenth century there were in England 

2 ». e., by removing the rhymes. alone over two hundred. 



SAMUEL JOHNSON 115 

None of them had obtained a permanent place in our litera- 
ture ; and they are now to be found only in the libraries of the 
curious. At length Johnson undertook the adventure in 
which so many aspirants had failed. In the thirty-sixth year 
after the appearance of the last number of the Spectator, 
appeared the first number of the Rambler. From March, 
1750, to March, 1752, this paper continued to come out every 
Tuesday and Saturday. 

From the first the Rambler was enthusiastically admired 
by a few eminent men. Richardson, 1 when only five numbers 
had appeared, pronounced it equal, if not superior, to the 
Spectator. Young 2 and Hartley 3 expressed their approbation 
not less warmly. Bubb Dodington, 4 among whose many 
faults indifference to the claims of genius and learning can- 
not be reckoned, solicited the acquaintance of the writer. In 
consequence probably of the good offices of Dodington, who 
was then the confidential adviser of Prince Frederick, two 
of his Eoyal Highness' s gentlemen carried a gracious message 
to the printing-office, and ordered seven copies for Leicester 
House. But these overtures seem to have been very coldly 
received. Johnson had had enough of the patronage of the 
great to last him all his life, and was not disposed to haunt 
any other door as he had haunted the door of Chesterfield. 

By the public the Rambler was at first very coldly received. 
Though the price of a number was only two-pence, the sale 
did not amount to five hundred. The profits were therefore 
very small. But as soon as the flying leaves were collected 
and reprinted they became popular. The author lived to see 
thirteen thousand copies spread over England alone. Sepa- 

1 Samuel Richardson, 1689-1761, at to estimate the true value of light Iitera- 
this time a famous novelist. ture. 

2 Edward Young, 1681-1765, best 4 George Bubb Dodington, afterward 
known by the meditative poem called Lord Melcombe, 1691-1762, was some- 
Night Thoughts. thing of a figure in the world of politics 

8 David Hartley, 1705-1757, was a and letters. He had tried his hand at 
philosopher. He and Richardson and essay writing in the World. 
Young were rather a serious set of men 



116 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

rate editions were published for the Scotch and Irish markets. 
A large party pronounced the style perfect, so absolutely per- 
fect that in some essays it would be impossible for the writer 
himself to alter a single word for the better. Another party, 
not less numerous, vehemently accused him of having cor- 
rupted the purity of the English tongue. The best critics 
admitted that his diction was too monotonous, too obviously 
artificial, and now and then turgid even to absurdity. But 
they did justice to the acuteness of his observations on morals 
and manners, to the constant precision and frequent brilliancy 
of his language, to the weighty and magnificent eloquence of 
many serious passages, and to the solemn yet pleasing humor 
of some of the lighter papers. On the question of precedence 
between Addison and Johnson, a question which, seventy years 
ago, was much disputed, posterity has pronounced a decision 
from which there is no appeal. Sir Eoger, his chaplain and 
his butler, Will Wimble and Will Honeycombe, the Vision of 
Mirza, the Journal of the Eetired Citizen, the Everlasting 
Club, the Dunmow Flitch, the Loves of Hilpah and Shalum, 
the Visit to the Exchange, and the Visit to the Abbey, are 
known to everybody. 1 But many men and women, even of 
highly cultivated minds, are unacquainted with Squire Blus- 
ter and Mrs. Busy, Quisquilius and Venustulus, the Allegory 
of Wit and Learning, the Chronicle of the Bevolutions of a 
Garret, and the sad fate of Aningait and Ajut. 

The last Rambler was written in a sad and gloomy hour. 
Mrs. Johnson had been given over by the physicians. Three 
days later she died. She left her husband almost broken- 
hearted. Many people had been surprised to see a man of 
his genius and learning stooping to every drudgery, and 
denying himself almost every comfort, for the purpose of 
supplying a silly, affected old woman 2 with superfluities, which 

1 This list of the subjects of the Spec- written some years before this, gives al- 

tator will interest readers of that period- most the same list, 

ical. It represents a definite opinion of 2 She was much older than he- 
Macaulav's who. in his essay on Addison 



SAMUEL JOHNSON 117 

she accepted with but little gratitude. But all his affection 
had been concentrated on her. He had neither brother nor 
sister, neither son nor daughter. To him she was beautiful 
as the Gunnings/ and witty as Lady Mary. 2 Her opinion of 
his writings was more important to him than the voice of the 
pit of Drury Lane Theater, or the judgment of the Monthly 
Review. The chief support which had sustained him through 
the most arduous labor of his life was the hope that she 
would enjoy the fame and the profit which he anticipated 
from his Dictionary. She was gone; and in that vast laby- 
rinth of streets, peopled by eight hundred thousand human 
beings, he was alone. Yet it was necessary for him to 
set himself, as he expressed it, doggedly at work. After 
three more laborious years, the Dictionary was at length 
complete. 

It had been generally supposed that this great work would 
be dedicated to the eloquent and accomplished nobleman to 
whom the Prospectus had been addressed. 3 He well knew the 
value of such a compliment; and therefore, when the day of 
publication drew near, he exerted himself to soothe, by a show 
of zealous, and at the same time of delicate and judicious, 
kindness, the pride which he had so cruelly wounded. Since 
the Rambler had ceased to appear, the town had been enter- 
tained by a journal called The World, to which many men of 
high rank and fashion contributed. In two successive num- 
bers of The World, the Dictionary was, to use the modern 
phrase, puffed with wonderful skill. The writings of Johnson 
were warmly praised. It was proposed that he should be 
invested with the authority of a Dictator, nay, of a Pope, 
over our language, and that his decisions about the meaning 

1 The Misses Elizabeth and Maria 2 Lady Mary Wortley Montague, 
Gunning were two famous Irish beau- 1690-1762, was a brilliant and some- 
ties. They appeared in London in what eccentric lady of the time just be- 
1751, where they created an immense fore Johnson. 

sensation and shortly married men of 3 The Earl of Chesterfield: see p. 112. 
rank. 



118 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

and the spelling of words should be received as final. His 
two folios, it was said, would of course be bought by everybody 
who could afford to buy them. It was soon known that these 
papers were written by Chesterfield. But the just resentment 
of Johnson was not to be so appeased. In a letter written 
with singular energy and dignity of thought and language/ 
he repelled the tardy advances of his patron. The Dictionary 
came forth without a dedication. In the preface the author 
truly declared that he owed nothing to the great, and 
described the difficulties with which he had been left to strug- 
gle so forcibly and pathetically, that the ablest and most 
malevolent of all the enemies of his fame, Home Tooke, 2 
never could read that passage without tears. 

The public, on this occasion, did Johnson full justice, and 
something more than justice. The best lexicographer may 
well be content if his productions are received by the world 
with cold esteem. But Johnson's Dictionary was hailed with 
an enthusiasm such as no similar work has ever excited. It 
was, indeed, the first dictionary which could be read with 
pleasure. The definitions show so much acuteness of thought 
and command of language, and the passages quoted from 
poets, divines, and philosophers, are so skilfully selected, that 
a leisure hour may always be very agreeably spent in turning 
over the pages. 3 The faults of the book resolve themselves, 
for the most part, into one great fault. Johnson was a 
wretched etymologist. He knew little or nothing of any 
Teutonic language except English, which, indeed, as he wrote 
it, was scarcely a Teutonic language; and thus he was abso- 
lutely at the mercy of Junius and Skinner. 

1 It is one of the best known of John- possibility of finding that Johnson has 

son's writings. concealed a joke in some out-of-the-way 

* Home Tooke, 1736-1812, was a place, as for instance. Oats: a grain 
politician and philologist. which in England is given to horses, but 

* This is literally true; the definitions in Scotland supports the people. See 
are always good and there is always the p. 122 for some other interesting cases. 



SAMUEL JOHNSON 119 

The Dictionary, though it raised Johnson's fame, added 
nothing to his pecuniary means. The fifteen hundred guineas 
which the booksellers had agreed to pay him had been 
advanced and spent before the last sheets issued from the 
press. It is painful to relate that, twice in the course of the 
year which followed the publication of this great work, he 
was arrested and carried to sponging-houses, 1 and that he was 
twice indebted for his liberty to his excellent friend Eichard- 
son. It was still necessary for the man who had been for- 
mally saluted by the highest authority as Dictator of the 
English language to supply his wants by constant toil. He 
abridged his Dictionary. He proposed to bring out an edition 
of Shakespeare by subscription; and many subscribers sent 
in their names, and laid down their money. But he soon 
found the task so little to his taste, that he turned to more 
attractive employments. He contributed many papers to a 
new monthly journal, which was called the Literary Magazine. 
Few of these papers have much interest ; but among them was 
the very best thing that he ever wrote, a masterpiece both of 
reasoning and of satirical pleasantry, the review of Jenyns's 
"Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil." 

In the spring of 1758 Johnson put forth the first of a 
series of essays, entitled the Idler. During two years these 
essays continued to appear weekly. They were eagerly read, 
widely circulated, and, indeed, impudently pirated, while they 
were still in the original form, and had a large sale when 
collected into volumes. The Idler may be described as a 
second part of the Rambler, somewhat livelier and somewhat 
weaker than the first part. 

While Johnson was busied with his Idlers, his mother, who 
had accomplished her ninetieth year, died at Lichfield. It 
was long since he had seen her; but he had not failed to 

1 These were private houses of de- possible) which might prevent their go- 
tention at which those arrested for debt ing to prison, 
couid make arrangements (if any were 



120 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

contribute largely, out of his small means, to her comfort. 
In order to defray the charges of her funeral, and to pay 
some debts which she had left, he wrote a little book in a 
single week, and sent off the sheets to the press without read- 
ing them over. A hundred pounds were paid for the copy- 
right ; and the purchasers had great cause to be pleased with 
their bargain, for the book was "Kasselas." 1 

The success of "Kasselas" was great, though such ladies 
as Miss Lydia Languish 2 must have been grievously disap- 
pointed when they found that the new volume from the cir- 
culating library was little more than a dissertation on the 
author's favorite theme, the Vanity of Human Wishes; that 
the Prince of Abyssinia was without a mistress, and the 
Princess without a lover ; and that the story set the hero and 
the heroine down exactly where it had taken them up. The 
style was the subject of much eager controversy. The Monthly 
Review and the Critical Review took different sides. Many 
readers pronounced the writer a pompous pedant, who would 
never use a word of two syllables where it was possible to use 
a word of six, and who could not make a waiting- woman 
relate her adventures without balancing every noun with 
another noun, and every epithet with another epithet. 
Another party, not less zealous, cited with delight numerous 
passages in which the weighty meaning was expressed with 
accuracy and illustrated with splendor. And both the censure 
and the praise were merited. 3 

About the plan of "Kasselas" little was said by the critics ; 
and yet the faults of the plan might seem to invite severe 
criticism. Johnson has frequently blamed Shakespeare for 

1 Rasselas is one of the few surviving it is written chiefly for the sake of the 

examples of a favorite form of literature moral discussions. 

of the eighteenth century, the Oriental 2 a romantic young lady in Sheridan's 

tale. There were many others, now Rivals. 

forgotten. The chief characteristic of 3 that is, the style was heavy but 

Rasselas is as Macaulay indicates, that there was good meaning. 






SAMUEL JOHNSON 121 

neglecting the proprieties of time and place, and for ascribing 
to one age or nation the manners and opinions of another. 
Yet Shakespeare has not sinned in this way more grievously 
than Johnson. Rasselas and Imlac, Nekayah and Pekuah, are 
evidently meant to be Abyssinians of the eighteenth century — 
for the Europe which Imlac describes is the Europe of the 
eighteenth century — and the inmates of the Happy Valley 
talk familiarly of that law of gravitation which Newton dis- 
covered and which was not fully received even at Cambridge 
till the eighteenth century. What a real company of Abys- 
sinians would have been may be learned from "Bruce's Trav- 
els." 1 But Johnson, not content with turning filthy savages, 
ignorant of their letters, and gorged with raw steaks cut from 
living cows, into philosophers as eloquent and enlightened as 
himself or his friend Burke, and into ladies as highly accom- 
plished as Mrs. Lennox or Mrs. Sheridan, transferred the 
whole domestic system of England to Egypt. Into a land of 
harems, a land of polygamy, a land where women are married 
without ever being seen, he introduced the flirtations and 
jealousies of our ballrooms. In a land where there is bound- 
less liberty of divorce, wedlock is described as the indissoluble 
compact. A youth and maiden meeting by chance, or brought 
together by artifice, exchange glances, reciprocate civilities, 
go home and dream of each other. "Such," says Rasselas, "is 
the common process of marriage." Such it may have been, 
and may still be, in London, but assuredly not at Cairo. A 
writer who was guilty of such improprieties had little right 
to blame the poet 2 who made Hector quote Aristotle, and rep- 

1 We may learn that, but Johnson nery and without historical costume 
could not have, for Bruce did not make could not have given historic realism 
his travels till after the days of Rasselas. if he had tried; what he aimed at was 

2 Shakespeare, of course; Hector poetic and rhetorical effect. Johnson 
quotes Aristotle in Troilus and Cressida. wanted a means for the exhibition and 
Julio Romano is in The Winter's Tale. discussion of human nature; he natu- 
It may be said that the reason for the rally chose a place where he would not 
anachronisms was the same. Shakes- be called upon to be historically or re- 
peare, writing for a stage without see- alistically exact. 



122 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

resented Julio Romano as nourishing in the days of the 
oracle of Delphi. 

By such exertions as have been described, Johnson sup- 
ported himself till the year 1762. In that year a great 
change in his circumstances took place. He had from a 
child been an enemy of the reigning dynasty. His Jacobite 
prejudices had been exhibited with little disguise both in 
his works and in his conversation. Even in his massy and 
elaborate Dictionary he had, with a strange want of taste 
and judgment, inserted bitter and contumelious reflections 
on the Whig party. The excise, which was a favorite resource 
of Whig financiers, he had designated as a hateful tax. He 
had railed against the commissioners of excise in language 
so coarse that they had seriously thought of prosecuting him. 
He had with difficulty been prevented from holding up the 
Lord Privy Seal by name as an example of the meaning of 
the word "renegade." A pension he had defined as pay given 
to a state hireling to betray his country ; a pensioner as a slave 
of state hired by a stipend to obey a master. It seemed 
unlikely that the author of these definitions would himself 
be pensioned. But that was a time of wonders. George the 
Third 1 had ascended the throne; and had, in the course of 
a few months, disgusted many of the old friends, and con- 
ciliated many of the old enemies of his house. The city 2 was 
becoming mutinous; Oxford was becoming loyal. Caven- 
dishes 3 and Bentincks were murmuring. Somersets 4 and 

1 The first Georges had favored the * The City of London was naturally 

Whig party, but George III. found Whig, Oxford Tory, 

among the Tories people more in har- 3 Cavendish was the family name of 

mony with his idea of kinghood. His the ducal house of Devonshire, Bentinck 

domestic policy was a prolonged strug- that of the dukes of Portland. These 

gle against the great Whig aristocracy. two families had been important ele- 

which had intrenched itself in power ments in the Whig aristocracy since the 

during the fifty years of his father's and davs of William and Mary, 

grandfather's reign. He was to a great 4 The Somersets and the Wyndhams 

degree successful; and the end of his had been the great Tory families of the 

reign left the Tories as powerful as the reign of Queen Anne, the last time of 

Whigs had been at its beginning. the Tories being in power till George III. 



SAMUEL JOHNSON 123 

Wyndhams were hastening to kiss hands. The head of the 
treasury was now Lord Bute/ who was a Tory, and could 
have no objection to Johnson's Toryism. Bute wished to.be 
thought a patron of men of letters; and Johnson was one 
of the most eminent and one of the most needy men of letters 
in Europe. A pension of three hundred a year was graciously 
offered, and with very little hesitation accepted. 

This, event produced a change in Johnson's whole way 
of life. For the first time since his boyhood he no longer 
felt the daily goad urging him to the daily toil. He was 
at liberty, after thirty years of anxiety and drudgery, to 
indulge his constitutional indolence; to lie in bed till two 
in the afternoon, and to sit up talking till four in the morn- 
ing, without fearing either the printer's devil 2 or the sheriff's 
officer. 

One laborious task indeed he had bound himself to perform. 
He had received large subscriptions for his promised edition 
of Shakespeare 3 ; he had lived on those subscriptions during 
some years, and he could not without disgrace omit to per- 
form his part of the contract. His friends repeatedly 
exhorted him to make an effort, and he repeatedly resolved 
to do so. But, notwithstanding their exhortations and his 
resolutions, month followed month, year followed year, and 
nothing was done. He prayed fervently against his idleness. 
He determined, as often as he received the sacrament, that 
he would no longer doze away and trifle away his time; but 
the spell under which he lay resisted prayer and sacrament. 
His private notes at this time are made up of self-reproaches. 
"My indolence," he wrote on Easter Eve in 1764, "has sunk 

1 a Scotch peer, who had held a po- 3 It was usual to write subscriptions 

sition under George III., while he had for literary works, and the lower sort of 

been Frince of Wales. At his accession literary hacks used to ask for subscrip- 

l^ortl tfute became for the time the tions without any intention of making 

ch ef man ,„ the poht.cal world. the books. Johnson issued his propos- 

mindta fw^T* Pri i ntil T 0f 5 Ce ' re " a,S in 1756 and did no * complete the 
minding him of the work to be done. work for nine years. 



124 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

into grosser sluggishness. A kind of strange oblivion has 
overspread me, so that I know not what has become of the 
last year." Easter, 1765, came and found him still in the 
same state. "My time," he wrote, "has been unprofitably 
spent, and seems as a dream that has left nothing behind. 
My memory grows confused, and I know not how the days 
pass over me." Happily for his honor, the charm which held 
him captive was at length broken by no gentle or friendly 
hand. He had been weak enough to pay serious attention 
to a story about a ghost which haunted a house in Cock Lane, 
and had actually gone himself, with some of his friends, at 
one in the morning, to St. John's Church, Clerkenwell, in 
the hope of receiving a communication from the perturbed 
spirit. But the spirit, though adjured with all solemnity, 
remained obstinately silent; and it soon appeared that a 
naughty girl of eleven had been amusing herself by making 
fools of so many philosophers. Churchill, 1 who, confident in 
his powers, drunk with popularity, and burning with party 
spirit, was looking for some man of established fame and 
Tory politics to insult, celebrated the Cock Lane Ghost in 
three cantos, nicknamed Johnson Pomposo, asked where the 
book was which had been so long promised and so liberally 
paid for, and directly accused the great moralist of cheating. 
This terrible word proved effectual; and in October, 1765, 
appeared, after a delay of nine years, the new edition of 
Shakespeare. 

This publication saved Johnson's character for honesty, 
but added nothing to the fame of his abilities and learning. 
The preface, though it contains some good passages, is not 
in his best manner. The most valuable notes are those in 
which he had an opportunity of showing how attentively he 

1 Charles Churchill, 1731-1764, was a work is read to-day. The poem in 
brilliant satirist, though none of his question was called The Ghost. 



SAMUEL JOHNSON 125 

had during many years observed human life and human 
nature. The best specimen is the note on the character of 
Polonius. 1 Nothing so good is to be found even in Wilhelm 
Meisters admirable examination of "Hamlet." 2 But here 
praise must end. It would be difficult to name a more 
slovenly, a more worthless, edition of any great classic. The 
reader may turn over play after play without finding one 
happy conjectural emendation, or one ingenious and satis- 
factory explanation of a passage which had baffled preceding 
commentators. 3 Johnson had, in his Prospectus, told the 
world that he was peculiarly fitted for the task which he had 
undertaken, because he had, as a lexicographer, been under 
the necessity of taking a wider view of the English language 
than any of his predecessors. That his knowledge of our 
literature was extensive is indisputable. But, unfortunately, 
he had altogether neglected that very part of our literature 
with which it is especially desirable that an editor of Shake- 
speare should be conversant. It is dangerous to assert a nega- 
tive. Yet little will be risked by the assertion, that in the 
two folio volumes of the English Dictionary there is not a 
single passage quoted from any dramatist of the Elizabethan 
age, except Shakespeare and Ben. 4 Even from Ben the quota- 
tions are few. Johnson might easily, in a few months, have 
made himself well acquainted with every old play that was 
extant. But it never seems to have occurred to him that this 
was a necessary preparation for the work which he had under- 
taken. He would doubtless have admitted that it would be 
the height of absurdity in a man who was not familiar with 

1 Polonius is the type of the talkative, task too great for him. 
over-shrewd, old man of affairs. He is 3 The early texts of Shakespeare are 
adviser to the King of Denmark. often incorrect, so that critics have to 

2 In his novel of Wilhelm Meister, conjecture as to the proper reading. 
Goethe expressed what has become one 4 Ben Jonson; a great contemporary 
of the classic views of Hamlet, that he of Shakespeare's, chiefly noted for his 
was a beautiful character, crushed by a comedies and masques. 



126 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

the works of iEschylus and Euripides to publish an edition 
of Sophocles. 1 Yet he ventured to publish an edition of 
Shakespeare, without having ever in his life, as far as can 
be discovered, read a single scene of Massinger, Ford, Decker, 
Webster, Marlowe, Beaumont, or Fletcher 2 . His detractors 
were noisy and scurrilous. Those who most loved and hon- 
ored him had little to say in praise of the manner in which 
he had discharged the duty of a commentator. He had, how- 
ever, acquitted himself of a debt which had long lain heavy 
on his conscience, and he sank back into the repose from 
which the sting of satire had roused him. He long continued 
to live upon the fame which he had already won. He was 
honored by the University of Oxford with a Doctor's degree, 
by the Eoyal Academy 3 with a professorship, and by the King 
with an interview, in which his Majesty most graciously 
expressed a hope that so excellent a writer would not cease to 
write. In the interval, however, between 1765 and 1775, John- 
son published only two or three political tracts, the longest of 
which he could have produced in forty-eight hours, if he had 
worked as he worked on the "Life of Savage" and on"Kasselas." 
But though his pen was now idle his tongue was active. 4 
The influence exercised by his conversation, directly upon 
those with whom he lived, and indirectly on the whole literary 
world, was altogether without a parallel. His colloquial tal- 
ents were, indeed, of the highest order. He had strong sense, 

1 These are the three great Attic 3 The Royal Academy of Arts was 

tragic poets, almost contemporary, founded in 1768 for the cultivation 

whose work has been preserved. chiefly of painting and sculpture. John- 

a the other chief play writers of son knew little of these matters; he held 

Shakespeare's time. Macaulay's criti- the position of professor of ancient 

cism is sound. If one know nothing of languages. 

the other writers of Shakespeare's time, * It is probably true that it is by the 

all sorts of things in the way of language remembrance of his personal character 

and thought will seem strange, which as exhibited in his conversations with 

were really very simple matters, and to his friends, that Johnson retains his 

be explained by the common practice of very great reputation, 
the day. 



SAMUEL JOHNSON 127 

quick discernment, wit, humor, immense knowledge of liter- 
ature and of life, and an infinite store of curious anecdotes. 
As respected style, he spoke far better than he wrote. Every 
sentence which dropped from his lips was as correct in struc- 
ture as the most nicely balanced period of the Rambler. But 
in his talk there were no pompous triads, and little more than 
a fair proportion of words in osity and ation. All was sim- 
plicity, ease, and vigor. He uttered his short, weighty, and 
pointed sentences with a power of voice, and a justness and 
energy of emphasis, of which the effect was rather increased 
than diminished by the rollings of his huge form, and by the 
asthmatic gaspings and puffings in which the peals of his 
eloquence generally ended. Nor did the laziness which made 
him unwilling to sit down to his desk prevent him from 
giving instruction or entertaining orally. To discuss ques- 
tions of taste, of learning, of casuistry, in language so exact 
and so forcible that it might have been printed without the 
alteration of a word, was to him no exertion, but a pleasure. 
He loved, as he said, to fold his legs and have his talk out. 
He was ready to bestow the overflowings of his full mind on 
anybody who would start a subject; on a fellow-passenger 
in a stage-coach, or on the person who sat at the same table 
with him in an eating-house. But his conversation was 
nowhere so brilliant and striking as when he was surrounded 
by a few friends, whose abilities and knowledge enabled them, 
as he once expressed it, to send him back every ball that he 
threw. Some of these, in 1764, formed themselves into a club, 1 
which gradually became a formidable power in the common- 
wealth of letters. The verdicts pronounced by this conclave 
on new books were speedily known over all London, and 
were sufficient to sell off a whole edition in a day, or to con- 

1 This Club continued a long time after not, however, retain the small personal 
the death of Johnson, and Macaulay character that it had originally had. 
himself became a member of it. It did 



128 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

demn the sheets to the service of the trunkmaker and the 
pastrycook. Nor shall we think this strange when we con- 
sider what great and various talents and acquirements met 
in the little fraternity. Goldsmith was the representative of 
poetry and light literature, Keynolds of the arts, Burke of 
political eloquence and political philosophy. There, too, were 
Gibbon, the greatest historian, and Jones, the greatest lin- 
guist, of the age. Garrick brought to the meetings his 
inexhaustible pleasantry, his incomparable mimicry, and his 
consummate knowledge of stage effect. Among the most con- 
stant attendants were two high-born and high-bred gentle- 
men, closely bound together by friendship, but of widely dif- 
ferent characters and habits, — Bennet Langton, distinguished 
by his skill in Greek literature, by the orthodoxy of his opin- 
ions, and by the sanctity of his life; and Topham Beauclerk, 
renowned for his amours, his knowledge of the gay world, his 
fastidious taste, and his sarcastic wit. To predominate over 
such a society was not easy. Yet even over such a society 
Johnson predominated. Burke might, indeed, have disputed 
the supremacy to which others were under the necessity of 
submitting. But Burke, though not generally a very patient 
listener, was content to take the second part when Johnson 
was present; and the club itself, consisting of so many emi- 
nent men, is to this day popularly designated as Johnson's 
Club. 

Among the members of this celebrated body was one to 
whom it has owed the greater part of its celebrity, yet who 
was regarded with little respect by his brethren, and had 
not without difficulty obtained a seat among them. This was 
James Boswell, 1 a young Scotch lawyer, heir to an honorable 
name and a fair estate. That he was a coxcomb and a bore, 
weak, vain, pushing, curious, garrulous, was obvious to all 

1 In his review of Croker's edition of writes at length on the subject of Bos- 
Boswell's Life of Johnson, Macaulay well's weakness of character. 



SAMUEL JOHNSON 129 

who were acquainted with him. That he could not reason, 
that he had no wit, no humor, no eloquence, is apparent from 
his writings. And yet his writings are read beyond the Mis- 
sissippi, and under the Southern Cross, and are likely to be 
read as long as the English exists, either as a living or as a 
dead language. Nature had made him a slave and an idola- 
ter. His mind resembled those creepers which the botanists 
call parasites, and which can subsist only by clinging round 
the stems and imbibing the juices of stronger plants. He 
must have fastened himself on somebody. He might have 
fastened himself on Wilkes, 1 and have become the fiercest 
patriot in the Bill of Eights Society. He might have fastened 
himself on Whitefield, 2 and have become the loudest field 
preacher among the Calvinistic Methodists. In a happy hour 
he fastened himself on Johnson. 3 The pair might seem ill 
matched. For Johnson had early been prejudiced against 
BoswelPs country. 4 To a man of Johnson's strong under- 
standing and irritable temper, the silly egotism and adulation 
of Boswell must have been as teasing as the constant buzz of 
a fly. Johnson hated to be questioned; and Boswell was 
eternally catechizing him on all kinds of subjects, and some- 
times propounded such questions as, "What would you do, sir, 
if you were locked up in a tower with a baby ?" Johnson was 
a water-drinker, and Boswell was a winebibber, and indeed 
little better than a habitual sot. It was impossible that there 
should be perfect harmony between two such companions. 
Indeed, the great man was sometimes provoked into fits of 

1 one of the prominent figures in the most important elements in national 
politics of the time. He was a man ot life. 

very considerable attainments, but his 3 But it was more than chance, it cer- 

fame has never risen higher than that of tainly showed a keenness of perception 

a popular politician, called a demagogue of what was worth while, that led Bos- 

by his enemies and a champion of liberty well to admire Johnson, rather than 

by his friends. Wilkes or Whitefield. 

2 the great preacher of one branch of 4 Johnson's prejudice against the 
the Methodist connection which in Scotch is one of the most widely known 
Johnson's time was becoming one of the things about him. 



130 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

passion, in which he said things which the small man, during 
a few hours, seriously resented. Every quarrel, however, was 
soon made up. During twenty years the disciple continued 
to worship the master; the master continued to scold the 
disciple, to sneer at him, and to love him. The two friends 
ordinarily resided at a great distance from each other. Bos- 
well practiced in the Parliament House of Edinburgh, and 
could pay only occasional visits to London. During those 
visits his chief business was to watch Johnson, to discover 
all Johnson's habits, to turn the conversation to subjects 
about which Johnson was likely to say something remark- 
able, and to fill quarto notebooks with minutes of what John- 
son had said. In this way were gathered the materials, out 
of which was afterward constructed the most interesting 
biographical work in the world. 

Soon after the club began to exist, Johnson formed a con- 
nection less important indeed to his fame, but much more 
important to his happiness, than his connection with Boswell. 
Henry Thrale, one of the most opulent brewers in the king- 
dom, a man of sound and cultivated understanding, rigid 
principles, and liberal spirit, was married to one of those 
clever, kind-hearted, engaging, vain, pert young women, who 
are perpetually doing or saying what is not exactly right, but 
who, do or say what they may, are always agreeable. In 1765 
the Thrales became acquainted with Johnson, and the 
acquaintance ripened fast into friendship. They were aston- 
ished and delighted by the brilliancy of his conversation. 
They were flattered by finding that a man so widely cele- 
brated preferred their house to any other in London. Even 
the peculiarities which seemed to unfit him for civilized so- 
ciety — his gesticulations, his rollings, his puffings, his mutter- 
ings, the strange way in which he put on his clothes, the 
ravenous eagerness with which he devoured his dinner, his 
fits of melancholy, his fits of anger, his frequent rudeness, his 






SAMUEL JOHNSON 131 

occasional ferocity — increased the interest which his new 
associates took in him. For these things were the cruel 
marks left behind by a life which had been one long con- 
flict with disease and adversity. In a vulgar hack writer, 
such oddities would have excited only disgust. But in a man 
of genius, learning, and virtue, their effect was to add pity 
to admiration and esteem. Johnson soon had an apartment 
at the brewery in Southwark, and a still more pleasant 
apartment at the villa of his friends on Streatham Common. 
A large part of every year he passed in those abodes — abodes 
which must have seemed magnificent and luxurious indeed, 
when compared with the dens in which he had generally 
been lodged. But his chief pleasures were derived from what 
the astronomer of his Abyssinian tale 1 called the endearing 
elegance of female friendship. Mrs. Thrale rallied him, 
soothed him, coaxed him; and, if she sometimes provoked 
him by her flippancy, made ample amends by listening to 
his reproofs with angelic sweetness of temper. When he was 
diseased in body and in mind, she was the most tender of 
nurses. No comfort that wealth could purchase, no con- 
trivance that womanly ingenuity, set to work by womanly 
compassion, could devise, was wanted to his sick-room. He 
requited her kindness by an affection pure as the affection of 
a father, yet delicately tinged with a gallantry which, though 
awkward, must have been more flattering than the attentions 
of a crowd of the fools who gloried in the names, now obso- 
lete, of Buck and Macaroni. 2 . It should seem that a full 
half of Johnson's life, during about sixteen years, was passed 
under the roof of the Thrales. He accompanied the family 
sometimes to Bath, and sometimes to Brighton, once to 
Wales, and once to Paris. But he had at the same time a 
house in one of the narrow and gloomy courts on the north 

1 Rasselas. known in this country through its oc- 

2 names for young fellows of gay life curring in Yankee Doodle. 
and high fashion; the latter is the better 



132 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

of Fleet Street. In the garrets was his library, a large and 
miscellaneous collection of books, falling to pieces and 
begrimed with dust. On a lower floor he sometimes, but very 
rarely, regaled a friend with a plain dinner — a veal pie, or a 
leg of lamb and spinach, and a rice pudding. Nor was the 
dwelling uninhabited during his long absences. It was the 
home of the most extraordinary assemblage of inmates that 
ever was brought together. At the head of the establishment 
Johnson had placed an old lady named Williams, whose chief 
recommendations were her blindness and her poverty. But, in 
spite of her murmurs and reproaches, he gave an asylum 
to another lady who was as poor as herself, Mrs. Desmoulins, 
whose family he had known many years before in Stafford- 
shire. Boom was found for the daughter of Mrs. Desmou- 
lins, and for another destitute damsel, who was generally 
addressed as Miss Carmichael, but whom her generous host 
called Polly. An old quack doctor named Levett, who bled 
and dosed coal-heavers and hackney coachmen, and received 
for fees crusts of bread, bits of bacon, glasses of gin, and 
some! i iocs a little copper, completed this strange menagerie. 
All these poor creatures were at constant war with each 
other, and with Johnson's negro servant Frank. Sometimes, 
indeed, they transferred their hostilities from the servant 
to the master, complained that a better table was not kept for 
them, and railed or maundered till their benefactor was glad 
io make his escape to Streatham, or to the Mitre Tavern. 
And yet he, who was generally the haughtiest and most irri- 
table of mankind, who was but too prompt to resent anything 
which looked like a Blight on the part of a purse-proud 
bookseller, or of a noble and powerful patron, bore patiently 
from mendicants, who, but for his bounty, must have gone 
to the workhouse, insults more provoking than those for 
which he had knocked down Osborne and bidden defiance to 
Chesterfield. 3 Year after year Mrs. Williams and "Mrs. Des- 

» See pp. 105. lis. 



SAMUEL JOHNSON 133 

moulins, Polly and Levett, continued to torment him and 
to live upon him. 

The course of life which has been described was inter- 
rupted in Johnson's sixty-fourth year by an important event. 
He had early read an account of the Hebrides, and had been 
much interested by learning that there was so near him a land 
peopled by a race which was still as rude and simple as in the 
Middle Ages. A wish to become intimately acquainted with 
a state of society so utterly unlike all that he had ever seen 
frequently crossed his mind. But it is not probable that his 
curiosity would have overcome his habitual sluggishness, and 
his love of the smoke, the mud, and the cries of London, 
had not Boswell importuned him to attempt the adventure, 
and offered to be his squire. At length, in August, 1773, 
Johnson crossed the Highland line, and plunged courageously 
into what was then considered, by most Englishmen, as a 
dreary and perilous wilderness. After wandering about two 
months through the Celtic region, sometimes in rude boats 
which did not protect him from the rain, and sometimes on 
small shaggy ponies which could hardly bear his weight, he 
returned to his old haunts with a mind full of new images 
and new theories. During the following year he employed 
himself in recording his adventures. About the beginning 
of 1775 his "Journey to the Hebrides" was published, and 
was, during some weeks, the chief subject of conversation 
in all circles in which any attention was paid to literature. 
The book is still read with pleasure. The narrative is enter- 
taining; the speculations, whether sound or unsound, are 
always ingenious; and the style, though too stiff and pom- 
pous, is somewhat easier and more graceful than that of his 
early writings. His prejudice against the Scotch had at 
length become little more than a matter of jest; and what- 
ever remained of the old feeling had been effectually removed 
by the kind and respectful hospitality with which he had 



134 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

been received in every part of Scotland. It was, of course, 
not to be expected that an Oxonian Tory should praise the 
Presbyterian polity and ritual, or that an eye accustomed to 
the hedgerows and parks of England should not be struck 
by the bareness of Berwickshire and East Lothian. 1 But 
even in censure Johnson's tone is not unfriendly. The most 
enlightened Scotchmen, with Lord Mansfield 2 at their head, 
were well pleased. But some foolish and ignorant Scotch- 
men were moved to anger by a little unpalatable truth which 
was mingled with much eulogy, and assailed him, whom they 
chose to consider as an enemy of their country, with libels 
much more dishonorable to their country, than anything that 
he had ever said or written. They published paragraphs in 
the newspapers, articles in the magazines, sixpenny pamphlets, 
fiveshilling books. One scribbler abused Johnson for being 
blear-eyed; another for being a pensioner; a third informed 
the world that one of the Doctor's uncles had been convicted 
of felony in Scotland, and had found that there was in that 
country one tree capable of supporting the weight of an 
Englishman. Macpherson, 3 whose "Fingal" had been proved 
in the "Journey" to be an impudent forgery, threatened to 
taken vengeance with a cane. The only effect of this threat 
was that Johnson reiterated the charge of forgery in the 
most contemptuous terms, and walked about, during some 
time, with a cudgel, which, if the impostor had not been 
too wise to encounter it, would assuredly have descended upon 
him, to borrow the sublime language of his own epic poem, 
"like a hammer on the red son of the furnace." 

1 counties in the south-east part of lations from the poems of Ossian, a 
Scotland. semi-historical Gaelic poet of the third 

2 William Murray, 1705-1793, a century. It was, for a time, a matter of 
Scotchman who became Chief Justice of dispute whether the poems were really 
the King's Bench, and was created Earl translations or written by himself, 
of Mansfield. Whichever they were they interested 

3 James Macpherson, 1738-1796, be- many people and were an undoubted 
came famous by his publication of trans- element in the Romantic movement. 



SAMUEL JOHNSON I 35 

Of other assailants Johnson took no notice whatever. He 
had early resolved never to be drawn into controversy; and 
he adhered to his resolution with a steadfastness which is the 
more extraordinary, because he was, both intellectually and 
morally of the stuff of which controversialists are made. 
In conversation, he was a singularly eager, acute, and per- 
tinacious disputant. When at a loss for good reasons he 
had recourse to sophistry; and when heated by altercation, 
he made unsparing use of sarcasm and invective. But when 
he took his pen in his hand, his whole character seemed to 
be changed. A hundred bad writers misrepresented him 
and reviled him; but not one of the hundred could boast of 
having been thought by him worthy of a refutation, or even 
of a retort. The Kenricks, Campbells, MacNicols, and Hen- 
dersons, did their best to annoy him, in the , hope that he 
would give them importance by answering them. But the 
reader will in vain search his works for any allusion to 
Kenrick or Campbell, to MaeMcol or Henderson. One 
Scotchman, bent on vindicating the fame of Scotch learning, 
defied him to the combat in a detestable Latin hexameter: 

Maxime, si tu vis, cupio contendere tecum. 

But Johnson took no notice of the challenge. He had learned, 
both from his own observation and from literary history, 
in which he was deeply read, that the place of books m the 
public estimation is fixed, not by what is written about them, 
but by what is written in them; and that an author whose 
works are likely to live is very unwise if he stoops to wrangle 
with detractors whose works are certain to die. He always 
maintained that fame was a shuttlecock which could be kept 
up only by being beaten back, as well as beaten forward, and 
which would soon fall if there were only one battledore. No 

i forgotten Scotchmen who attacked Johnson. 



136 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

saying was oftener in his mouth than that fine apothegm of 
Bentley, 1 that no man was ever written down but by himself. 

Unhappily, a few months after the appearance of the 
"Journey to the Hebrides/' Johnson did what none of his 
envious assailants could have done, and to a certain extent 
succeeded in writing himself down. The disputes between 
England and her American colonies had reached a point at 
which no amicable adjustment was possible. Civil war was 
evidently impending; and the ministers seem to have thought 
that the eloquence of Johnson might with advantage be 
employed to inflame the nation against the opposition here, 
and against the rebels beyond the Atlantic. He had already 
written two or three tracts in defense of the foreign and 
domestic policy of the government; and those tracts, though 
hardly worthy of him, were much superior to the crowd of 
pamphlets which lay on the counters of Almon and Stock- 
dale. 2 But his "Taxation No Tyranny" was a pitiable failure. 
The very title was a silly phrase, which can have been recom- 
mended to his choice by nothing but a jingling alliteration 
which he ought to have despised. The arguments were such 
as boys use in debating societies. The pleasantry was as 
awkward as the gambols of a hippopotamus. Even Boswell 
was forced to own that, in this unfortunate piece, he could 
detect no trace of his master's powers. The general opinion 
was that the strong faculties which had produced the Diction- 
ary and the Rambler were beginning to feel the effect of time 
and of disease, and that the old man would best consult his 
credit by writing no more. 

But this was a great mistake. Johnson had failed, not 
because his mind was less vigorous than when he wrote 
"Kasselas" in the evenings of a week, but because he had 
foolishly chosen, or suffered others to choose for him, a sub- 

1 Richard Bentley, 1662-1742, a famous scholar and Master of Trinity College, 
Cambridge. 2 printers and booksellers. 



SAMUEL JOHNSON 137 

ject such as he would at no time have been competent to 
treat. He was in no sense a statesman. He never willingly 
read or thought or talked about affairs of state. He loved 
biography, literary history, the history of manners ; but politi- 
cal history was positively distasteful to him. The question 
at issue between the colonies and the mother country was a 
question about which he had really nothing to say. He 
failed, therefore, as the greatest men must fail when they 
attempt to do that for which they are unfit; as Burke would 
have failed if Burke had tried to write comedies like those of 
Sheridan 1 ; as Reynolds would have failed if Reynolds had 
tried to paint landscapes like those of Wilson. 2 Happily, 
Johnson soon had an opportunity of proving most signally 
that his failure was not to be ascribed to intellectual decay. 
On Easter Eve, 1777, some persons, deputed by a meeting 
which consisted of forty of the first booksellers in London, 
called upon him. Though he had some scruples about doing 
business at that season, he received his visitors with much 
civility. They came to inform him that a new edition of the 
English poets, from Cowley 3 downward, was in contemplation, 
and to ask him to furnish short biographical prefaces. He 
readily undertook the task, — a task for which he was pre- 
eminently qualified. His knowledge of the literary history 
of England since the Restoration 4 was unrivaled. That 
knowledge he had derived partly from books, and partly 
from sources which had long been closed, — from old Grub 
Street traditions; from the talk of forgotten poetasters and 
pamphleteers who had long been lying in parish vaults ; from 
the recollections of such men as Gilbert Walmesley, 5 who 

1 Edmund Burke, though a greater 3 Abraham Cowley, 161&-1667, was in 

orator than Sheridan, could not have hj 3 day far more widely admired than 

written The Rivals. Milton. 

*Sir Joshua, though a great portrait < Theretumof Charles II. to the throne 

painter, was not a master of landscape. after the Commonwealth in 1660 is 

Richard Wilson painted pictures, many called the Restoration. 

of which have great charm even at the 1 ^ Pe p jqq 
present day. 



138 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

had conversed with the wits of Button; 1 Cibber, 2 who had 
mutilated the plays of two generations of dramatists; Orrery, 3 
who had been admitted to the society of Swift; and Savage, 
who had rendered services of no very honorable kind to Pope. 
The biographer therefore sat down to his task with a mind full 
of matter. He had at first intended to give only a paragraph 
to every minor poet, and only four or five pages to the great- 
est name. But the flood of anecdote and criticism overflowed 
the narrow channel. The work, which was originally meant 
to consist only of a few sheets, swelled into ten volumes, — 
small volumes, it is true, and not closely printed. The first 
four appeared in 177!), the remaining six in 1781. 

The "Lives of the Poets" are, on a whole, the best of 
Johnson's works. The narratives are as entertaining as 
any novel. The remarks on life and on human nature are 
eminently shrewd and profound. The criticisms are often 
excellent, and, even when grossly and provokingly unjust, 
well deserve to be studied. For, however erroneous they 
may be, they are never silly. They are the judgments of 
a mind trammeled by prejudice and deficient in sensibility, 
but vigorous and acute. They therefore generally contain 
a portion of valuable truth which deserves to be separated 
from the alloy ; and, at the very worst, they mean something, 
a praise io which much of what is called criticism in our 
time has no pretensions. 

"Savage's Life" Johnson reprinted nearly as it had appeared 
in 1744. Whoever, after reading that Life, will turn to the 
other Lives, will be struck by the difference of style. Since 
Johnson had been at ease in his circumstances he had written 
little and talked much. When, therefore, he, after the lapse 
of years, resumed his pen, the mannerism which he had con- 

1 Button had kept a famous literary 1730. 

coffee-house in the time of Queen Anne. s The Earl of Orrery was of the weP- 

s Colley Cibber, 107 1-1757. was an known Irish family of Boyle and had 

actor ami manager of Prury Lane published a life of Swift. 
Theatre, as well as Foet Laureate in 



SAMUEL JOHNSON 139 

tracted while he was in constant habit of elaborate composi- 
tion, was less perceptible than formerly; and his diction fre- 
quently had a colloquial ease which it had formerly wanted. 
The improvement may be discerned by a skillful critic in 
the "Journey to the Hebrides," and in the "Lives of the 
Poets" is so obvious that it cannot escape the notice of the 
most careless reader. 

Among the Lives the best are perhaps those of Cowley, 
Dryden, and Pope. The very worst is, beyond all doubt, 
that of Gray. 

This great work at once became popular. There was, 
indeed, much just and much unjust censure; but even those 
who were loudest in blame were attracted by the book in 
spite of themselves. Malone 1 computed the gains of the pub- 
lishers at five or six thousand pounds. But the writer was 
very poorly remunerated. Intending at first to write very 
short prefaces, he had stipulated for only two hundred 
guineas. The booksellers, when they saw how far his per- 
formance had surpassed his promise, added only another 
hundred. Indeed, Johnson, though he did not despise, or 
affect to despise, money, and though his strong sense and 
long experience ought to have qualified him to protect his 
own interests, seems to have been singularly unskillful and 
unlucky in his literary bargains. He was generally reputed 
the first English writer of his time. Yet several writers of 
his time sold their copyrights for sums such as he never 
ventured to ask. To give a single instance, Eobertson 2 
received four thousand five hundred pounds for the "History 
of Charles V."; and it is no disrespect to the memory of 
Eobertson to say that the "History of Charles V." is both a 
less valuable and a less amusing book than the "Lives of 
the Poets." 

1 Edmund Malone, 1741-1812, was an 2 Robertson, after Gibbon and Hume, 

excellent critic of the day, best known was the best known historian of the 
for his edition of Shakespeare. eighteenth century 



140 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

Johnson was now in his seventy-second year. The infirmi- 
ties of age were coming fast upon him. That inevitable 
event of which he never thought without horror was brought 
near to him; and his whole life was darkened by the shadow 
of death. He had often to pay the cruel price of longevity. 
Every year he lost what could never be replaced. The strange 
dependents to whom he had given shelter, and to whom, in 
spite of their faults, he was strongly attached by habit, 
dropped off one by one; and, in the silence of his home, he 
regretted even the noise of their scolding matches. The kind 
and generous Thrale was no more; and it would have been 
well if his wife had been laid beside him. But she survived 
to be the laughing-stock of those who had envied her, and 
to draw from the eyes of the old man who had loved her 
beyond anything in the world, tears far more bitter than he 
would have shed over her grave. With some estimable and 
many agreeable qualities, she was not made to be independent. 
The control of a mind more steadfast than her own was 
necessary to her respectability. While she was restrained by 
her husband, a man of sense and firmness, indulgent to her 
taste in trifles, but always the undisputed master of his house, 
her worst offenses had been impertinent jokes, white lies, and 
short fits of pettishness, ending in sunny good-humor. But 
he was gone ; and she was left an opulent widow of forty, with 
strong sensibility, volatile fancy, and slender judgment. She 
soon fell in love with a music-master from Brescia, in whom 
nobody but herself could discover anything to admire. 1 Her 
pride, and perhaps some better feelings, struggled hard against 
this degrading passion. But the struggle irritated her nerves, 
soured her temper, and at length endangered her health. 

iShe married Gabrielle Piozzi and Thrale's passion "degrading" as he 

lived very happily with him for a long afterwards says. Nothing is known to 

time. He was not a man of great note, Piozzi's discredit. Even Macaulay can 

but he seems to have been of an excel- say nothing worse of him than that he 

lent and worthy character. It is hard was "an Italian fiddler," "a music- 

to see why Macaulay thought Mrs. master from Brescia. ' 



SAMUEL JOHNSON 141 

Conscious that her choice was one which Johnson could not 
approve, she became desirous to escape from his inspection. 
Her manner toward him changed. She was sometimes cold 
and sometimes petulant. She did not conceal her joy when 
he left Streatham; she never pressed him to return; and, if 
he came unbidden, she received him in a manner which con- 
vinced him that he was no longer a welcome guest. He took 
the very intelligible hints which she gave. He read, for the 
last time, a chapter of the Greek Testament in the library 
which had been formed by himself. In a solemn and tender 
prayer he commended the house and its inmates to the Divine 
protection, and, with emotions which choked his voice and 
convulsed his powerful frame, left forever that beloved home 
for the gloomy and desolate house behind Fleet Street, where 
the few and evil days which still remained to him were to 
run out. Here, in June, 1783, he had a paralytic stroke, 
from which, however, he recovered, and which does not 
appear to have at all impaired his intellectual faculties. But 
other maladies came thick upon him. His asthma tormented 
him day and night. Dropsical symptoms made their appear- 
ance. While sinking under a complication of diseases, he 
heard that the woman whose friendship had been the chief 
happiness of sixteen years of his life had married an Italian 
fiddler; that all London was crying shame upon her; and 
that the newspapers and magazines were filled with allusions 
to the Ephesian matron 1 and the two pictures in "Hamlet." 2 
He vehemently said that he would try to forget her existence. 
He never uttered her name. Every memorial of her which 
met his eye he flung into the fire. She meanwhile fled from 
the laughter and hisses of her countrymen and countrywomen 
to a land where she was unknown, hastened across Mount 
Cenis, and learned, while passing a merry Christmas of con- 

1 a character in a licentious novel of Petronius Arbiter. 

2 Hamlet draws a picture of his mother's first husband as compared with her 
second. 



142 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

certs and lemonade parties at Milan, that the great man with 
whose name hers is inseparably associated had ceased to 
exist. 

He had, in spite of much mental and mnch bodily afflic- 
tion, clung vehemently to life. The feeling described in 
that fine but gloomy paper which closes the series of his 
Idlers, seemed to grow stronger in him as his last hour drew 
near. He fancied that he should be able to draw his breath 
more easily in a southern climate, and would probably have 
set out for Eome and Naples but for his fear of the expense 
of the journey. That expense, indeed, he had the means 
of defraying; for he had laid up about two thousand pounds, 
the fruit of labors which had made the fortune of several 
publishers. But he was unwilling to break in upon this 
hoard, and he seems to have wished even to keep its existence 
a secret. Some of his friends hoped that the government 
might be induced to increase his pension to six hundred 
pounds a year ; but this hope was disappointed, and he resolved 
to stand one English winter more. That winter was his last. 
His legs grew weaker ; his breath grew shorter ; the fatal water 
gathered fast, in spite of incisions which he, courageous 
against pain, but timid against death, urged his surgeons to 
make deeper and deeper. Though the tender care which had 
mitigated his sufferings during months of sickness at Strea- 
tham was withdrawn, he was not left desolate. The ablest 
physicians and surgeons attended him, and refused to accept 
fees from him. Burke parted from him with deep emotion. 
Windham sat much in the sick-room, arranged the pillows, 
and sent his own servant to watch at night by the bed. 
Frances Burney, 1 whom the old man had cherished with 
fatherly kindness, stood weeping at the door; while Lang- 

1 Frances Burney, 1752-1S40, was at well-known composer and writer of 
this time a famous novelist. She was music, 
the daughter of Dr. Charles Burney, a 



SAMUEL JOHNSON 143 

ton, whose piety eminently qualified him to be an adviser 
and comforter at such a time, received the last pressure of 
his friend's hand within. When at length the moment, 
dreaded through so many years, came close, the dark cloud 
passed away from Johnson's mind. His temper became 
unusually patient and gentle; he ceased to think with terror 
of death, and of that which lies beyond death; and he spoke 
much of the mercy of God, and of the propitiation of Christ. 
In this serene frame of mind he died on the 13th of December, 
1784. He was laid, a week later, in Westminster Abbey, 1 
among the eminent men of whom he had been the historian, — 
Cowley and Denham, Dryden and Congreve, Gay, Prior, and 
Addison. 

Since his death, the popularity of his works— the "Lives 
of the Poets," and, perhaps, the "Vanity of Human Wishes/' 
excepted— has greatly diminished. His Dictionary has been 
altered by editors till it can scarcely be called his. An 
allusion to his Rambler or his Idler is not readily appre- 
hended in literary circles. The fame even of "Kasselas" has 
grown somewhat dim. But though the celebrity of the 
writings may have declined, the celebrity of the writer, strange 
to say, is as great as ever. Boswell's book has done for him 
more than the best of his own books could do. The memory 
of other authors is kept alive by their works. But the memory 
of Johnson keeps many of his works alive. The old philoso- 
pher is still among us in the brown coat with the metal 
buttons, and the shirt which ought to be at wash, blinking, 
puffing, rolling his head, drumming with his fingers, tearing 
his meat like a tiger, and swallowing his tea in oceans. No 
human being who has been more than seventy years in the 
grave is so well known to us. And it is but just to say that 
our intimate acquaintance with what he would himself have 

Un the east transept of Westminster Abbey is a part called Poets' Corner. 
Here Johnson was buried and here, too, lies Macaulay. 



144 SAMUEL JOHNSON 

called the anfractuosities of his intellect and of his temper, 
serves only to strengthen our conviction that he was both a 
great and a good man. 1 

1 Because in spite of personal eccentricities and intellectual prejudices, he was 
easily seen to be devoted to Truth and to Goodness, at a time when there was much 
to distract and mislead. 



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